Cranberries

[Reviled]

Has anyone brewed with cranberries before?

Im thinking of doing a cranberry wheat beer for summer, I figure the sweetness in the wheat beer will counter the tart/sourness of the cranberries...

Ill probably use about 1-2kgs of cranberries to start with, but the only ones ive found are ocean spray 'craisins' at $4 for 170g theyre a bit pricy, so does anyone else know of a good source of bulk cranberries?

Also - any info on what to do with the fruit would be awesome, from what ive read putting them into secondary is best, but should I boil the cranberries first? Or chuck em in and maybe get some funky wild yeast thingy going on as well???

Cheers

[Beer_ledgend]

Have a look at this reciepe http://www.ratebeer.com/Recipe.asp?RecipeID=208, maybe modify using the Cranberries, suggests belending. One option :)

[Reviled]

Sweet cheers guys, looks like i could have some fun with this :o)

[Reviled]

Heres my recipe for my Cranberry Cream Ale - Im planning to brew it, boil it, then split the batch over two fermenters, one batch i might ferment with a british yeast just to be different and dry hop to hell and back, the other will be dry 'hopped' with around 2kgs of cranberries :o) Yum!! I normally put cane sugar in my cream ales to thin the body out, but after reading DG's notes about the juice and his porter being thin, im going all malt with this one in the hope that the cranberry juice will ferment a lil and thin out to the desired FG... Exciting stuff

75% Pale - Either Golden Promise or Kolsch
20% Maize
3% Global Light Cara - Jo, I thought this would be good here in place of carapils? To get some sweetness without the carapils flavours?? Correct me if im wrong??
2% Munich - to up the malt character, allthough I doubt it will do much...

Shooting for an OG of 1040-1042 with about 20 IBU

[MrC]

2% wheat maybe?

If those cranberries make the head pink you'll want it to last as long as it can ;-)

Also, have you looked into pectic enzyme? I've never used it but I will for my next fruit beer to remove the haze that the fruit can bring. It may not apply to non heat treated fuit though.

I believe Mike brewed a Cherry Saison. How did that come out Mike?

[Reviled]

i actually thought about sneaking some wheat in there, allthough the maize helps with head retention, but yeh I guess a few percent wheat couldnt hurt :o) Do you think 2% would be enough? Maybe 3-4%??

Havnt looked into the enzyme, didnt really want to complicate things too much, plus im not worried if its hazy, as long as its red/pink ;o)

[MrC]

Personally I'd happily go up to 5% but I know others here aren't so keen on the wheat flavour. I think a little (or a lot) tartness/sourness in a fruit beer is expected.

[Reviled]

Cheers mate, ill meet halfway and go with 4% wheat ;o)

[Mike Neilson]

Its the Dogs Bollocks!! Im going to drink the 2 bottles tonight!!

[Reviled]

So Mike, what did you do with the cherrys? Did you use an enzyme or anything? Heat treat them? Or just chuck em in and hope for the best?

[Mike Neilson]

Strelized a hand blitzer, blitzed them up and chucked them into the secondry. And bobs your uncle!!

[Reviled]

lol, was there even any point in sterilising the blitzer?? Surely there wouldve been some wild funky shit on the cherrys...

I might take your approach, its close enough to just throwing them in the secondary, and im sure by pulping the fruit up itll make extraction of the good stuff easy..

Did you put the fruit into muslin? Or just chuck it in? Any shit in the bottles??

[Mike Neilson]

Nah these were pasturised in the jar. I didnt want any funk. Yeah I cold crashed it for 4 days I still have shit in the bottles but oh well, it was the first one and I will be brewing more of them.