Cranberry lambic?

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PearlJamNoCode

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Right now I'm drinking a Sam Adams Cranberry Lambic, and although its not a great beer, it does taste pretty good, something other people (read: non-homebrew friends) would definitely enjoy. Anybody have a good clone or recipe for this tasty beverage?
 
Cran? Yuck!

Lambics are an interesting brew. Read up on it around here - just search for lambic. To do a good 'traditional' lambic, you're talking about a year or so.

Now, if you want to try something that's good and similar, look at my Saison recipe in the recipe database and add fresh fruit or fruit extract to taste.
 
In a thread in the commercial beer forum, someone was saying that it's not a lambic at all.

FWIW. I can't stand the stuff, personally.
 
It is really a cranberry fruit beer. I think cranberries would be tough in a beer since they are so tart and have no sweetness at all.
 
My girlfriend has been begging me to clone this because she can only find it in the holiday packs from Sam Adams (two in a 12-pack). I've never had it-- she says it doesn't really even taste like a lambic... but she likes it.

Beerrific said:
I think cranberries would be tough in a beer since they are so tart and have no sweetness at all.

Maybe the tartness is what would give it the "acid malt" lambic quality and then you'd have to add a ton of maltiness to balance it out with sweetness?
 
Yeah the more i drink them the more i realize that it isnt a beer at all.

either way it would be an interesting drink to make.
 
PearlJamNoCode said:
Yeah the more i drink them the more i realize that it isnt a beer at all.

either way it would be an interesting drink to make.

Give a rasberry saison a try then. It's a real beer. It only takes the standard amount of time to make and drink. Without raspberries, even the BMC drinkers like it. With raspberries, the women in my neighborhood beg for it when I'm outside making my brew and are dissapointed when I run out.

I'd recommend replacing the sorachi ace in my recipe with something less bite, more citrus, but other than that - it's a proven recipe.
 
jezter6 said:
Give a rasberry saison a try then. It's a real beer. It only takes the standard amount of time to make and drink. Without raspberries, even the BMC drinkers like it. With raspberries, the women in my neighborhood beg for it when I'm outside making my brew and are dissapointed when I run out.

I'd recommend replacing the sorachi ace in my recipe with something less bite, more citrus, but other than that - it's a proven recipe.

that sounds promising... i'll look for a recipe.
 
I did a cranberry ale and it is tart and dry. I mashed on the high end to try for some residual sweetness/body, but still got something near 1.01 FG. The Sam Adams is much sweeter.

I used 1 quart 100% cranberry juice and two bags of cranberries. What a mess the cranberries were.
 
I don't really have anything of substance to add, but here's a couple pretty pictures:
IMG_1897.jpg

IMG_1900.jpg

It's a cranberry mead. 2# of fresh Wisconsin cranberries. Frozen, thawed, pureed, and pasturized.

I hope to crack the first bottle on turkey day 2008.
 
A local guy did a Cran ale for a recent comp. He just added frozen cran concentrate (juice) to the secondary.

You might consider adding a very small amount of cranberry juice at bottling, to get the "sweeter" tartness like the SA Cran "Lambic" has.
 
JeffNYC said:
I used 1 quart 100% cranberry juice and two bags of cranberries. What a mess the cranberries were.

Were the cranberries worth it or would you recommend using more juice to make up for the hassle? I did a cherry beer once and my autosiphon was useless, because the cherries kept clogging up the filter for the last half of the batch when siphoning to the tertiary.
 
Just for the record, I am not "middle of the road" beer drinker. I love interesting and creative brews, but both my wife and I pour out the "cough medicine" cranberry Lambic from the sam adams variety pack. But to each their own!Cheers
 
barnes said:
Were the cranberries worth it or would you recommend using more juice to make up for the hassle? I did a cherry beer once and my autosiphon was useless, because the cherries kept clogging up the filter for the last half of the batch when siphoning to the tertiary.

Why were you using a filter? A siphon with an endcap should have got you the most beer for you buck into the fermenter leaving behind the spent fruit sludge.

When I did my 2 fruit beers, most of the fruit stayed up on top anyways, so it didn't clog anything until it got to the bottom gallon or so anyway.
 
jezter6 said:
Why were you using a filter? A siphon with an endcap should have got you the most beer for you buck into the fermenter leaving behind the spent fruit sludge.

When I did my 2 fruit beers, most of the fruit stayed up on top anyways, so it didn't clog anything until it got to the bottom gallon or so anyway.

That's what I meant-- the auto-siphon "endcap-filter" thing. It worked well for about half of the secondary, but then it started to get clogged. I used 6 pounds of cherries and even though I smashed them, they still took up a lot of room in the carboy.

I ended up pouring the beer through a sanitized funnel with a filter into the tertiary and kept tossing out the cherry skins when they'd fill up the filter. I'm sure that beer was terribly oxidated, but it tasted okay after 5 or 6 months of aging.
 
cherrywheat.jpg


This picture makes me think it was closer to one-forth left before it began to clog. Either way, I vowed never to use any fruit with skins in my secondary again!!

Can anyone say anything more about using fruit juice compared to the actual fruit?
 

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