Recipe Advice Thread

[denimglen]

Thought it might be handy to have a thread for some of the more advanced brewers to give some advice on recipes.

Let's see how it goes eh...

[Reviled]

Oh, I should add that I got almost no haze in my cranberry cream beer, and didnt add pectic enzyme... It didnt get infected either, allthough if I was bottling I would have taken extra precautions... I reckon its pretty hard for an infection to take hold when the beers in a keg at 4*c...

[James P]

Did you fermented your ale at 4C or cold conditioned on fruit?

My neopolition porter was on strawberries for a week, which had been frozen. Next time that will be getting pastuerised and filtered before being thrown in secondary.

[Reviled]

No James, good point! I fermented at around 22*c, then left the beer on the cake before adding the fruit in the hope that the yeast would act as my 'bouncer' (keeping all the bad guys out) untill the beer was in the keg and in the fridge...

[Tony]

I asked a professional brewer about the wild yeast on fruit and the yeast thing. He was of the opinion that the pitched yeast overcomes the wild. It shouldn't be a problem (?).

[Reviled]

Its all down to quantity Tony - Imagine youve got this big cake of pitched yeast in there, then theres a few microscopic wild yeasts come into the picture - who do you think will win in a fight?

If its in a week or so it doesnt really concern me, its what can happen in the bottle, at room temp over a long period of time, that concerns me...

[Stu McKinlay]

depending on what the beer is the tannins might be a benefit... the Three boys Plum beer I had a xmas had this lovely mellow tannin thing going on. It made me feel insignificant.

[MrC]

My technique with fruit beers is to steep half of the fruit in the hot wort post boil for 20min before chilling. The rest of the fruit gets pasteurised, cooled, placed in a muslin bag and then added directly to the fermenter after primary. I then taste the beer every day and remove the fruit bag when it tastes just right. I can then keg/bottle whenever I'm ready.

For me, it's brew on a weekend, add fruit the following weekend, taste daily and remove fruit if ready, keg the following weekend. If you follow that kind of process and the skins are problematic you'll know very early on and you can remove them. You could even add some peeled ones afterwards.

p.s. - I boil the muslin bag and a peice of string in water for 15 min to sterilise them while the fruit is steeping.

[JackoNZ]

Thought I'd post an update on how the plum IIPA is going. My base beer which was bittering and flavour hops only had got down to 1.012 which brings it in at 6.66% Devil beer anyone? Samples were tasting really good, nice firm bitterness coming through, some warming alcohol but not solventy or raw and the centennial flavour is great. Interestingly I also get quite a bit of hop aroma out of this even though the last hop addition was at 20mins to go.

First attempt at the plums failed before it even got started, I left the plums a week to ripen right up hoping to get plenty of flavour but when I tried them they were very watery and tasted like shit. Heated some up and they got no better so dumped them. Yesterday I picked up some more black plums only to find the flesh was orange not red! Anyway they tasted much better so went with it, glad I did as the skin has leached the colour I wanted anyway. I pastuerized a kilo of them at 80c for about 15/20 mins, added to a hop sock and chucked in the fridge. This morning I added them in to the secondary fermenter along with some of the red juice and racked the beer onto them.

So far so good, the base beer was a success so if this all turns to shit I know the plums are to blame. Still hoping I can pull this off.

1 question I had for you fruit beer brewers. I now have some extra sugars from the fruit, as this gets eaten should I expect my gravity to drop even lower or has it gone back up and will drop back to 1.012 once the yeast is done feeding?

[Reviled]

The grav will probably drop lower as a result of more alcohol being present.. Without looking at my notes my cranberry cream ale base finished at 1010, with the cranberries it went up to 1012 and finally finished at 1008...

Sounds like it will be an interesting beer none the less, im quite keen to know what the fruit flavour is like with a hop flavour addition!

[MrC]

My finishing gravities are higher in my fruit beers than in the non fruit beers. I've done a couple of split batches where half gets fruit and the other half doesn't.

Example:
Plain Wheat Beer FG = 1.0008
Same beer with fruit FG = 1.0012

The problem is that you don't know how much sugar you're adding when you add the fruit so you don't really have an accurate OG and therefore can't get an accurate ABV%.

[Nick T]

At the risk of sounding stoopid, what happens when you mix american hops with a british yeast? I have some 1968 that needs to be used, thinking of a stout, but would like to use up some american hops as well. Any thoughts, or is this just too yick to contemplate?

[warra48]

Should work well for a stout,
WY1968 gives you a very malt oriented brew, so that's perfect for a stout.
The hops are not up front in a stout, so I'd say to go for it.