Beer Into Wine; A Christian Miracle?

So a few months ago I brewed up a delicious wheat beer and decided to toss it onto some fruit. Following the direction of Ray Daniels in "Designing Great Beers," I managed to leave my wheat on 10 lbs of whole strawberries for roughly two months only to discover that my precarbonated brainchild had become rather vinous.

I won't sugar coat it; what went wrong? What can I do next time to get those delicious fresh fruit flavors without transforming my beer? Also, I have had success with cherries in the past but I had them in the primary instead of the secondary. The cherry fermentation was pleasantly reflected in the color, flavor and odor of the beer. Should different fruits be treated differently?

Finally; I am a firm believer of leaving no brew behind. I am confident that this strawberry wine beer is not infected so I want to carbonate it and put it on tap soon. It would be awesome if I would be able to make this into a wine cooler like product. Is there anything I can add to it to make it sweeter without invoking yet another fermentation?

Thanks a ton for any replies!

You could add lactose to make it sweeter. It won't ferment with typical brewer's yeast.

Splenda is good for back sweetening, it tastes like sugar but doesn't ferment.

Thanks for the input! I thought about lactose but it's rather expensive around here; about $5 per pound at the local hombrew shop. I have been thinking that if I were to keep the liquid around 42 F, perhaps could I add simple sugar to the solution without worrying about another fermentation.

yeah you could sweeten each pint as necesary with any sugar, even sprite.

djonas said:

Thanks for the input! I thought about lactose but it's rather expensive around here; about $5 per pound at the local hombrew shop. I have been thinking that if I were to keep the liquid around 42 F, perhaps could I add simple sugar to the solution without worrying about another fermentation.

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I would not temp the yeast like that. Better to sweeten each glass with a packet of sugar or splenda, or Sprite, or flavored syrup...

Well, I guess that settles the taste problem; I don't mind mixing drinks!

I have had the "wine taste" happen with cherries.

What I am trying this time is to make sure the yeast does not get at the fruit. I am going to cold crash the beer, rack onto the cherries, and keep it cold in the kegerator. Once it is kegged, the keg will stay in the kegerator.

Hopefully, the cold crashing will remove most yeast and keeping the beer cold will prevent any further yeast activity and I will not wind up with wine.

Not sure if anybody really cares but I am going to post some results regarding the strawberry beer.

The aforementioned wine flavors had mellowed out with time and became less noticeable when the beer was chilled for a few weeks. It seemed that the base beer plus the fruit fermentation roughly left us with a 7% ABV drink, so it may just have needed some time to mellow. Still, the strawberry beer had an interesting consistency that seemed to slither around and coat the mouth. Unfortunately, that's not my cup of tea but I could muscle down a pint every now and then when I wanted to be treated to something, well, different.

So the bad news is that the beer did not seem to have a strong strawberry taste to it but it was certainly fruity. If not suggested, a drinker rarely guessed that the magical ingredient was the aforementioned fruit but often though it was some other berry. Also, at least in my book, the mouthfeel was a tad slimy.

The good news is that strawberries are relatively tart to begin with so having yeast eat up all the sugars will simply leave a sharper brew. So the resulting beer was relatively sour, making it a gem amongst sour beer lovers. At least around here, it seems that sour beers are picking up in popularity so we had a handful of regulars who tapped out the keg in about two weeks, making it the fastest keg to deplete not present at a party!

Finally, I had recently tried a strawberry beer at a new brewery restaurant in Champaign, Illinois, which tasted and felt much like our beer. I guess if you use strawberries, you ought to expect these things!

hahahhahahahahahhaaaa

I made a mulberry oatmeal stout, it is one of the wife's favy beers, it tastes like a stout blended with a merlot...not my most favorite but it goes good with a steak! The worst part is she wants more...12 bottles left...lesson learned...fruit in beer is a bad idea...or a good idea if you love steak...

djonas said:

Thanks for the input! I thought about lactose but it's rather expensive around here; about $5 per pound at the local hombrew shop. I have been thinking that if I were to keep the liquid around 42 F, perhaps could I add simple sugar to the solution without worrying about another fermentation.

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A pound is probably about all you need...one pound will raise the gravity of a five gallon batch by about 8 to 10 points. There does seem to be an interpersonal difference in how sweet lactose is percieved, though, and of course you have to warn people you may share with in case they are lactose intolerant.

I like lactose though...I put one pound in my cider every year and it definitely cuts that dry, vinous quality way down.

Zamial said:

hahahhahahahahahhaaaa

I made a mulberry oatmeal stout, it is one of the wife's favy beers, it tastes like a stout blended with a merlot...not my most favorite but it goes good with a steak! The worst part is she wants more...12 bottles left...lesson learned...fruit in beer is a bad idea...or a good idea if you love steak...

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Ha ha! Callously stated, you get steak and a buzzed woman! What more can a guy ask for?!

biochemedic said:

A pound is probably about all you need...one pound will raise the gravity of a five gallon batch by about 8 to 10 points. There does seem to be an interpersonal difference in how sweet lactose is percieved, though, and of course you have to warn people you may share with in case they are lactose intolerant.

I like lactose though...I put one pound in my cider every year and it definitely cuts that dry, vinous quality way down.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the input! I personally have a tough time picking up on lactose but it is a good idea to help balance the tartness.