Showing posts with label fruit beer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fruit beer. Show all posts

Friday, November 18, 2011

Tasting: Dueling Wits

I brewed my Session by Session Witbier and split the batch half on strawberries and left the other half alone. I bottled them last week and the are already carbonated.  I will check back in a couple weeks to see if they matured anymore in the bottle. Both came out lighter than the picture looks, coming as you could wish for using extract. The teaspoon of whole wheat flour I added into the brew kettle as advised in Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing added a nice haze customary to Wits. Overall the strawberry version is my definite favorite. 

Appearance – Both have nice creamy white heads, the unfruited version staying and the fruited beer loses its head after a minute or two. Probably because of oils  in the fruit.

Smell – The nose on the unfruited version has a yeasty wheat aroma. The berried version is a yeasty berry.

Taste – This is where I wish I could of found indian coriander instead of the normal grocery store variety I used, it comes through with a celery taste instead of the bright citrus taste I hoped for. Still tastes like it should, I am just not a big fan of coriander. The strawberry beer is came out exactly as I had hoped, a bright berry, slightly tart taste with a biscuit yeasty background.

Mouthfeel – Light body with medium carbonation, but they should carbonate a little more hopefully. Dry and leaves the mouth wanting more, perfect for a summer beer.

Brewing Notes -  Session by Session Witbier



American Cucumber Wheat

I've had the ingredients sitting there for awhile but hadn't gotten around to brewing it until today. I've been really wanting to play with different fruit and vegetable additions. This thread on homebrewtalk sparked my interest in using Cucumbers in an American Wheat. Sounds like it would of been perfect on a hot summer day but should still be enjoyable now. I plan on putting a portion of the batch onto cucumbers, another gallon or two onto mangos and maybe keeping a gallon without fruit.
This batch also was almost entirely all grain with only a pound of extract used. I may try an all grain batch next, I always thought I couldn't really do all grain on my stove but this has changed my opinion.
The grain bill was very simple this time and I've decided to keep my future grain bills as simple as possible.

UPDATE- My First Pelicle and A Cucumber Wheat
 

Specifics 
Batch Size: 5 gallons
Anticipated SRM: 4.1
Anticipated IBU: 22.8
Wort Boil Time: 60
Original Gravity:  1.047
Grain
3 lb Wheat Malt
4 lb Two Row
1 lb Wheat DME

Hops
.5  oz Warrior (16.7%) @ 60 min

 Yeast
Dry Nottingham Ale

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Graff Experiments and Kolsch update

I racked the Graff into two different 3 gallon carboys. One was left alone and the other was racked onto tart cherries. The cherries were fresh picked, frozen and thawed to break the cell walls. The Graff is a lot darker than I expected but I expect that is from the crystal 120. Within twelve hours a new krausen had formed on the on the carboy with the cherries.
At this point it seems like most fermentation on the Kolsch has slowed down almost entirely. Its pretty cloudy but also its very young still. Its got a nice color that should be a nice blonde color in the glass. In the picture below left to right; Normal Graff, Cherry Graff, Kolsch.