Fruit beer tastes "winey"

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Indiana Red

Supporting Member
HBT Supporter
Joined
Feb 28, 2006
Messages
184
Reaction score
6
Location
Idaho, USA
So, I made a simple American Wheat 50/50 (2-row and wheat) and I used WL 830.
OG was about 1.05 and after most bubbling activity stopped I transfered to Secondary and another week later I kegged it and added 5# of raspberries that I had warmed to about 150F and puree'd, and imediately chilled it and started to carbonate.
After a week or so, I decided it was too dry and so I made 3# more of raspberies plus 1# sugar, "pasteurized" the same as before and added this syrup to the keg. After chilling and rough filtering I tastes like wine a bit too much.
I don't kow how else to explain it. It is not nearly carbonated enough right now and that may be part of it.
Low PH maybe (haven't tested it) but it just has that white wine flavor and I am not sure how that got there or what I did to it.
I realize that this is a lot of fruit and that I am making it a bit sweet but I sure didn't expect this. I am bringing it to a Christmas party next weekend and am a bit dissapointed.
Any ideas or suggestions?
Actually I am not even sure what it is that I am tasting that makes me think wine.
It's wierd.
 
I think 8# of berries and a pound of sugar = wine. The extra sugar from the beers and extra sugar you added fermented out and made raspberry wine. I'm not sure how you can fix this- does it taste too thin? That can be fixed.
 
Well, my intent was to add all that stuff "post-ferment" and keeping it chilled. So I will test a few things but I bet my gravity came back up after adding the fruit and sugar. maybe next time, campden to make sure it doesn't ferment later.
 
I'd have to agree. You're over the line into wine-mixed-with-beer. By the same token, people that hate craft beer might love it. Tell them it's Fruli.:D
 
I've made fruit beers with 10# of fruit. But, I didn't add at packaging time. I added mine in the secondary and allowed that to ferment out to completion. Most 5 gal batches will call for around 10# of fruit to get a good flavor. I haven't added additional sugar with the fruit though. You can count on your gravity going up. If you would have added Campden tablets to stop fermentation, I bet that would taste really nasty-probably excessively sweet.
 
Either make beer or wine. Mixing so much fruit is taking away from wht it is supposed to be, BEER. I personally like beer to taste like beer.
 
Back
Top