Grapefruit Golden/Kolsch

I'm new to brewing beer, and I don't think I'm quite ready equipment-wise for all grain, but I'm happy to do partial mash or just use specialty malts with extracts.

I know it's a little early in the season to start thinking about summer ales, but I've currently got a Sierra Nevada Porter clone in the primary and I'm thinking of something nice and light for my next batch. I was wondering how I might go about making a grapefruit-flavored light ale. Either a light pale or a mild, and was thinking of maybe putting a little grapefruit peel in during the boil then putting some fresh grapefruit juice in the fermenter with the wort.

I'm concerned about a) too much bitterness from the grapefruit peel and b) too much acidity from the juice for the yeast to thrive.

Are my concerns not really worth worrying about, or does anybody have some tips on making a beer like I'm thinking of? I'd hope for a nice crisp ale, not too hoppy, with a light grapefruit/citrus note.

Thanks for the input!
Aaron

You mention 4 kinds of beer: golden, kolsch, pale, and mild. I'd start by figuring out which style you want to do as the yeast character, malt and hop profiles are going to be different in each. That said, there's a thread about a grapefruit IPA that is supposed to turn out very well. Or you could just dry hop with some cirtusy hops like Citra.

If you're going to use the peel make sure it's just the zest. And put in it after primary fermentation so you don't lose to much aroma. The juice is mentioned it the thread I referenced earlier too I believe.

I suppose that I haven't yet decided what style I want. After doing a little reading on the technical styles, I found the following - let me know if I'm off base here, as I am only starting to be able to really classify all the different styles as some of them are pretty similar to the uneducated palate...

Kolsch - brewed with pale malts and sometimes wheat, an ale which is sometimes lagered as well. Generally rather light hop flavors.

Mild - amber or pale in color, brewed with pale and caramel malts, lightly hopped, low ABV.

Pale - I was thinking more of a sessionable English Bitter than an American Pale here, as I was wanting something more light, I would tend to shy away from big hop flavor for this brew. But pales seem to be a bit more hopped than I am shooting for this brew.

Golden seems to be a catch-all that brewers sometimes use to describe their beer but isn't really a 'style' per se. I think that most clear milds and pales would fall under this category.

So, based on this, I would probably shy away from a Kolsch as wheat & citrus beers don't excite me that much. I'm also not really set up to do any lagering right now.

I would be more likely to go for a mild or a light mild, something that is <5% ABV and uses maybe just a touch of crystal malt... maybe crystal 40? I would do a small amount of bittering hops (Willamette?), maybe .75-1.0 oz for 60 minutes and probably either none or very little aroma hops, maybe .25-.5 oz for 10 min.

I think the zest is a better idea than peel, you'd get more of the flavor and less of the bitter.

Is acid a concern for the wort? Also what about using a commercially available grapefruit flavored extract (or making my own!)?

Thanks!
Aaron

I think it's easier to say what you are calling a pale is a bitter. Which is mild and sessionable. Golden is usually a belgian. Kolsch tends to be a little more on the dry side in my experience compared to an english bitter/mild in terms of malt flavor.

Relatively speaking, all these could be lightly hopped. But speaking of that, hop bitterness, aroma and flavor are all sliding scales within a style so you can tailor these to suit your imagination. I'd probably go the route of the mild if I understand what you're implying.

I wouldn't expect the volume of grapefruit juice needed would change the PH to much. BTW, have you ever had the ruby red that shiner came out with last summer? Extract could work but I'd save it for bottling day. I'd still say zest and citrusy hops but I like IPAs so my tastes lead there.

Double_D said:

I think it's easier to say what you are calling a pale is a bitter.

Click to expand...

So when people generally say 'pale ale' is that usually referring to an American Pale Ale, like Sierra Nevada Pale or Drifter or something?

Versus a (english-style) bitter or ESB, which usually isn't anywhere near as hoppy as a APA?

Double_D said:

BTW, have you ever had the ruby red that shiner came out with last summer? Extract could work but I'd save it for bottling day. I'd still say zest and citrusy hops but I like IPAs so my tastes lead there.

Click to expand...

I haven't! Sounds great and refreshing. Never thought about extract at bottling time - I'll have to look into that. I think the hops I use depend on when I brew this - I have some leftover Willamettes from my Porter that I'd love to use but I could use Amarillo for that last 10-15 min for aroma. I also love IPAs but I'm going for something smoother that non-hopheads can dig.

I'm looking forward to making some single-hop IPAs though this summer which will help me be able to identify hops in commercial beers =]

Train your non-hopheads. If you brew it they will drink it. I use amarillo in almost everything. I love it. Pale Ale is american or english. I've tried drifter once and it's not my style, to BMC. Of course I had two ice chests of the BMC stuff for new years so I'd not putting it down. I think if you compared Sierra Nevada to an english beer it would considerably overpower it. Even an english IPA like Samuel Smith is less hoppy. Bitter is a misnomer. It is the session beer over there, at least that's how I understand it.

Ale yeast into the coopers lager makes a pretty cool pale ale base for my mash extract recipe. I used Hallertauer hops during the boil and dry hop a secondary with Fuggles. Pale malt and some vienna is in my mini mash (Thats just my pick). I get some very efficient mashes in my 4 gal pot... I will post a vid of mine when it's ready. It gets racked on Sunday.

As far as too early to think of summer, no way! I started a spring lager on Dec 30th that wont be ready till mid april. Never too early. Its sitting at 12C. Nothing like bringing in that first warm day with a fresh batch of kick ass lager... lmao

Now is time to plan your lawnmower beer....

OK, well I picked up 8 lbs of light LME on Saturday. Planning to do 1 oz. of Willamettes at 60 min and .25 oz of Chinook at 10 min. The LHBS was out of Amarillo so Chinooks should be a nice substitute, and if I like the result of this beer I'll brew another batch after I can get my hands on some Amarillos.

I'm also going to try the late extract addition method as a lot of people seem to speak highly of it for lighter-colored beers, which is what I'm going for. So I'll do 3 lbs. or LME for the full boil and add the rest at flameout.

I'll add as much grapefruit zest as I can get from one large grapefruit to the secondary, and see what happens.

fastenova said:

OK, well I picked up 8 lbs of light LME on Saturday. Planning to do 1 oz. of Willamettes at 60 min and .25 oz of Chinook at 10 min. The LHBS was out of Amarillo so Chinooks should be a nice substitute, and if I like the result of this beer I'll brew another batch after I can get my hands on some Amarillos.

I'm also going to try the late extract addition method as a lot of people seem to speak highly of it for lighter-colored beers, which is what I'm going for. So I'll do 3 lbs. or LME for the full boil and add the rest at flameout.

I'll add as much grapefruit zest as I can get from one large grapefruit to the secondary, and see what happens.

Click to expand...

You're heading down the right street very fast! :rockin:

Well, I brewed this beast up on Saturday.

4 lbs. light LME for 60 min along with 1.25 oz. of Willamettes,
Approx .25 oz. of Chinooks at 15 min
remaining 4 lbs. of light LME at flameout, and waited for 10 minutes after completely dissolving the LME to cool it.

OG of 1.085! That's a bit higher than I was expecting... But that's ok by me. If it gets down to .010 it'll be a little over 6% which was stronger than I wanted, so perhaps it'll peter out a little sooner.

Pitched yeast and saw vigorous activity in <18 hours, and it's been going crazy ever since at 66-68 deg. Actually had to rig up a better blowoff setup because it was foaming so much. That's a good problem to have! =]

It's smelling great so far, going to add the zest to the fermenter after it stops bubbling and I see a constant gravity for a few days.

8 lbs of LME should result in an OG of 1.056 in a 5 gal batch. Are you doing a smaller batch, or did you add water to the wort to get to batch size and it wasn't completely mixed?

fastenova said:

OG of 1.085! That's a bit higher than I was expecting...

Click to expand...

Was I drinking when I posted this!?! That should be 1.058 as my OG.

I was expecting a gravity closer to 1.045 or 1.050 but I didn't make any calculations and this is only my second batch so I'm not surprised I was off on my estimation.

It happens! Ever hear the saying that it takes money to make money? Well, in my brewing process, it takes beer to brew beer. Sometimes, my notes are a bit funny when I go back and read them...

Mike, you have some great sounding stuff in your queue. I'm on my last bottle of spiced mead (somehow it's only a couple of months old and tastes amazing... Friends and I downed two bottles on our annual New Year's Eve Eve hot springs trip!) and working on a high % chocolate mead, plus a comparo of identical batches with blackberry, wildflower, and orange blossom honeys.

I'm very jealous of your six primaries. I have a couple of friends that I make mead with, together we have four, but I only have one of my own for beer etc. I need to fix that...

I make mead by the gallon, so it is fairly inexpensive to get 6-8 jugs for primaries. For mead, I use empty spring water 1 gallon jugs for secondaries. I always end up with less than a gallon, and can squeeze them to make sure there's no headspace. If they gas out, it expands the jug back to normal shape, and I know its time to vent. I need to move them all to secondaries, and make some new ones.

Well, this is down to 1.014 and has held solid for three days with almost no activity in the airlock. So, I racked it into another sanitized bucket, got rid of the trub, then racked back into my primary with all the zest I could get off one grapefruit.

I was going to just siphon into the first bucket and add the zest, then I remembered this bucket has a weird lid fitting problem so I wanted to get it in a bucket I could seal, thus the immediate second rack.

Before adding the grapefruit zest it was clearing very well, and tasted great! Nice and light. It was a little more bitter a few days ago but it's already mellowed out with the yeast flocculating out. Should be even better cold. And at 5.7% it's nothing to be ashamed of!

Alright, this has aged with a good amount of grapefruit zest for 6 days now. It's cleared well and is a nice golden color. It has a nice hop nose and about the right amount of body. However, the grapefruit is mostly undetectable. I'm not sure whether I should add more zest and give it another week, or consider adding a small amount of fresh grapefruit juice to it. I do want it to have a subtle yet noticeable grapefruit aroma/flavor.

If I keg immediately and don't plan on bottling any of it for long-term storage (1-2 days max if I share with friends) and keep it cold, it seems to me like I don't need to worry about the sugars in the fresh juice. Is that accurate?

I am also game to add more zest into the keg in a bag to see what effect that has so I can start carbonation.

Thoughts?

Well I just wanted to update with my thoughts on this beer. I will say that I likes it but didn't love it, but everyone who tasted it LOVED it! I guess I'm just too critical of my own beer. Has a nice hop flavor without being too bitter, but I would go a little less on the Willamettes for 60 min and a little more on the chinooks in the middle/end for more flavor. The grapefruit note is also good but I'd try doubling the amount of zest in the secondary. Finally, I wanted it to be a little lighter so I'd probably go closer to 6-6.5 lbs of LME if I were to do it again, possibly using pilsner LME for part of that.

I'll be making it again later this spring as it starts to warm up!