Advice on an ale recipe.....Bruiseberry Ale

I'm trying to dial in a recipe i have in my head, it's going to be called Bruiseberry ale. I'm shooting for a very mild IBU that's wife friendly. I was toying with the Brewtarget hardware & got confused in a hurry, so anyway here is my basic starting point (5gal):


FERMENTABLES:
4lbs Ultralight malt extract
1 lb dried rice extract
1lb Crystal malt 10L

HOPS:
.5 oz Cascade hops 60 min boil (bittering)
.5 oz Cascade hops 1 min boil (aroma)

1 Whirfloc

2lbs frozen blueberries
2lbs frozen blackberries

YEAST:
Safale S-4 (no idea if that's good)

I was going to do a partial mash, i guess, steeping the crystal malt in a mesh bag to add some body & head retention (At 160F ish i guess for how long?). I haven't brewed in quite a while & seem to remember doing that in the past.

Then add fermentables & hops for the boil.

Cool pitch yeast in primary. (my temp will be around 75F)

When fermentation slows move to secondary with berries. Here I am a little unclear. I was going to bring the berries to 160F to sterilize & add to wort. Is that advisable?
Also i've heard of adding something to stop fermentation so the berry flavor comes through. Should i do this? Or, just let them ferment out in the secondary, then keg?

Thanks for any advice.

You'll want to steep your grains for 30 minutes or so, you can go longer, depends on how much goodness you want to pull from the grains. Looks like you're going for a fruited cream ale, you may actually have to much fruit there. I'd think about cutting back to maybe a lbs. of each, or you will have hardly any beer flavor and have a fizzy, malty fruit drink, which might be your plans! Safale S-04 is a nice english ale yeast, I always have a few packs in my fridge.

Whenever I use fruit I use campden tablets to kill off all the little beasties. I take my fruit, smash it up in a nice sterile container, crush up a campden tablet or two, dump it in with the fruit. I place a clean dish towel over the container with the fruit in it so the metabisulphite can escape, wait 24 hours, dump the fruit in secondary and rack on top of it.

I personally prefer to keep my fruit fresh, I know a lot on here will mention boiling the fruit can release pectin making the brew cloudy. I prefer not heating it to preserve the flavor. Ideally you will wait until fermentation has stopped in primary (as shown by Hydrometer readings!) before you rack on to the fruit in secondary. After 10 days or so on the fruit, rack to your bucket and bottle away.

iammatt said:

You'll want to steep your grains for 30 minutes or so, you can go longer, depends on how much goodness you want to pull from the grains. Looks like you're going for a fruited cream ale, you may actually have to much fruit there. I'd think about cutting back to maybe a lbs. of each, or you will have hardly any beer flavor and have a fizzy, malty fruit drink, which might be your plans! Safale S-04 is a nice english ale yeast, I always have a few packs in my fridge.

Whenever I use fruit I use campden tablets to kill off all the little beasties. I take my fruit, smash it up in a nice sterile container, crush up a campden tablet or two, dump it in with the fruit. I place a clean dish towel over the container with the fruit in it so the metabisulphite can escape, wait 24 hours, dump the fruit in secondary and rack on top of it.

I personally prefer to keep my fruit fresh, I know a lot on here will mention boiling the fruit can release pectin making the brew cloudy. I prefer not heating it to preserve the flavor. Ideally you will wait until fermentation has stopped in primary (as shown by Hydrometer readings!) before you rack on to the fruit in secondary. After 10 days or so on the fruit, rack to your bucket and bottle away.

Click to expand...

OK thanks. Would my choice of crystal malt 10L be acceptible for steeping?

Also, anyone know the stuff I'm supposed to add to stop fermentation prior to adding the fruit? Or, should I just add nothing?

I don't think 4 pounds of fruit is all that much honestly. Most of the fruit beers I've seen have been more than that.


Fruit is tough though, because the sugar ferments out, and fruit doesn't taste the same sans sugar.

Crystal 10L will work great, in fact it's probably the most commonly used steeping grain for light colored ales. You don't need to add anything to stop fermentation. Let it ferment in primary untill the hydrometer reads the same for at least 3 days in a row. Once fermenting is done. Dump the sanitized fruit in secondary and rack your beer from primary on top of the fruit. Let it sit for 10 days or so and bottle.

Why I mention 4lbs of fruit being alot is because of the fermentablea in the recipe. Is it supposed to be a fruit beer or a beer flavored fruit drink. Either way is fine but take it into consideration.

iammatt said:

Crystal 10L will work great, in fact it's probably the most commonly used steeping grain for light colored ales. You don't need to add anything to stop fermentation. Let it ferment in primary untill the hydrometer reads the same for at least 3 days in a row. Once fermenting is done. Dump the sanitized fruit in secondary and rack your beer from primary on top of the fruit. Let it sit for 10 days or so and bottle.

Why I mention 4lbs of fruit being alot is because of the fermentablea in the recipe. Is it supposed to be a fruit beer or a beer flavored fruit drink. Either way is fine but take it into consideration.

Click to expand...

Actually i just ordered 1 lb of German vienna malt instead of the crystal 10L because morebeer.com did not have crushed crystal 10L in stock. Would this be a good alternative?

firefly765 said:

Actually i just ordered 1 lb of German vienna malt instead of the crystal 10L because morebeer.com did not have crushed crystal 10L in stock. Would this be a good alternative?

Click to expand...

I don't want to be a bummer, but, Vienna malt has to be mashed. HOWEVER, if you are comfortable steeping grains you can easily do a mini-mash with that 1lbs. of Vienna malt, and raise your OG a bit while you're at it!

iammatt said:

I don't want to be a bummer, but, Vienna malt has to be mashed. HOWEVER, if you are comfortable steeping grains you can easily do a mini-mash with that 1lbs. of Vienna malt, and raise your OG a bit while you're at it!

Click to expand...

Funny you mention this. I just got off the phone with their tech support & replaced that with 1 lb of honey malt(25L) & 2 oz of aromatic(26Lcastel). Really helpful guy named Matt there hooked me up if anyone is interested.

Thanks for the advice.