My Holiday Brew

My wife had a Blueberry Lager at the Manayunk Brew Pub last summer and has been bugging me since then to make something similar. I figured I would take a shot for the holidays, for a lot of reasons. First, the presence of something lighter in taste will give me a way to deflect people from my very hoppy red ales. Second, it will allow me to have something that should be more accessible, taste-wise, for gift giving and company.

I tended more toward raspberry than blueberry, which does not seem quite as compatible with beer to me. I was thinking about a wheat beer but as I said, I want this to be, well, unchallenging enough for people who are not used to my brews. I also want it to be as pale as I can - some folks are put off by even the appearance of a darker brew. I also don't want to overpower the rasperry taste.

In the brew tank right now (since last weekend) is my attempt. I used a very light unhopped LME, along with (I forget how much) rice solids. I used a very light hop load - only one ounce of a 3.6% acid hop (my notes are in the attic with my brewing stuff) for the whole boil. No steeping grains at all.

I am using raspberry extract rather than throwing fruit into the brew tank. I hope this works out - dumping several pounds of raspberries into my plastic tank seemed fraught with unpleasant potential.

I used a dry yeast and it percolated steadily for a couple of days and has now sat quietly and behaved itself since Wednesday.

I go to bottle next weekend. If it is going to be tolerable, it should be good to go by the holiday week. Wish me luck.

I've been disappointed with fruit extracts, the flavor never seems right. But, extracts have advantages. If you want to brew with actual fruit in the future, I would recommend getting a large fine meshed grain bag and putting the fruit in that. I've made ciders with three gallons of blackberries in the bag (this bag is actually as large as the primary fermenting bucket).

I'd have to agree with your wife on blueberry, I'm hoping I get enough fruit next year for a batch or two.

Bottling this weekend. I have been uncharacteristically looking forward to bottling day, which I usually view as a necessary nuisance. I think I am because my last batch had a terrific yield (I had fifty six bottles sanitized and could have filled at least two or three more - it killed me to have to dump some out) and the process was the neatest and smoothest of any batch to date.

Have you tried it yet?

On the part about dumping some out--I always have a few extra plastic water bottles laying around (Aquafina, Dasani, etc.) so if I run out of real bottles during bottling, I fill those up. That way during the process of lettign them carb up, I can squeeze the plastic bottles accasionally to see how the carbing is coming, and take samples along the way (1 after a week, 1 after 2weeks, etc.).

I also usully bottle one up and put the carbonator cap on and gas one up to drink instantly. Gotta have a keg system to do that though.

I have been doing a Raspberry Ale and I use Smukers Seedless jam myself and Have had great friendly beer.

Seedless jam. That never occurred to me. I'll have to mess around with that some time.

What a great idea - seedless jam. How much do you use, assuming you do the normal five gallon batches? Obviously this could work for other fruits as well. I would assume you would want something as close to pure fruit as you could get.

Does anyone have any notion of how many pounds of fruit go into a given size of jam?

By the way, just got done bottling - wish me luck. It smells great!

Definately keep me posted on how this comes out. I am very curious to brewing with real fruit but I am always scared of introducing some nasties to my brew. I have never been to sure on how much fruit to use as well.

I added about 7 pounds of frozen cherries to the secondary of the wheat beer I brewed. It's been conditioning for some time and is very cherry. I definitely would not add as much next time.

Pondering this, I am guessing that if you use a seedless jam, you could figure maybe something like three or four to one reduction. Thus, if you wanted to get the equivalent of five pounds of raspberries, for example, you would use one and 1/4 pound of jam. Sound about right?

Though for a fact, nothing I saw in the grocery store I go to was pure fruit. Even that Polaner's All Fruit had some juice in it.

Since jams typically come on one pound jars, you could relax and have a peanut butter and jam sandwich with the rest...