Ec Plectico
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- Dec 6, 2019
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Since I have several fruit trees, I’ve been brewing fruit ales, using LME, for a few years now. I’ve made peach, cherry, plum and apricot batches. All have been drinkable. I like the cherry the best.
In November, I started my first batch of red wine after I was invited to pick Cabernet Sauvignon grapes, for a fee, from a nice hillside vineyard not too far away.
A by-product of that was 4 gallons or so of fermented Cabernet Sauvignon grapes with the juice (wine) squeezed out. They were quite dry.
I’m sort of a seat-of-the-pants brewer, and try to use what’s convenient and available to brew my beers, or ciders, since I have apple trees, too. I don’t like to waste anything, so I brew these fruit beers to use up the excessive abundance of the fruit. My wife and I can, bake, dry, freeze fruit all summer long.
So when I looked at the grapes, for which I had paid $70, I thought I’d brew me up some grape lees beer.
I looked about to see what other folks had done, and grape lees seem rarely used, so I decided to do what I usually do and just start a batch of ale fermenting, and add the grapes in a brewing bag after fermentation starts to wane, and leave it in there for a week or so until the ale was fully fermented.
I expected that the resulting product would be purplish, with some tannins from the skins and perhaps a little additional alcohol from residual sugars, unlikely since the wine squeezed from the grape lees was zeroed out.
So that’s what I did. I have a FastFermenter, so I shoot for 7 gallons of finished product. I started with about 7 gallons of tap water and 9 lbs. of ultralight liquid malt extract. I didn’t use any other grains or flavors because I wanted whatever grape flavor I got to be the focus. I added 1 ounce of 1-year old Chinook whole cone hops when it came to a boil, and another ounce at about 10 minutes from turning the gas off. I put in half of a fining tablet with about 15 minutes to go.
After I got the wort into the FastFermenter, I added a cup or so of saved Safale US05 from a previous batch. It started sending up bubbles through the airlock in 8 hours or so, and it continued for five days and slowed a little bit. I had to go somewhere for a few days, so I put about 4 pounds of squeezed grapes into the fermenter with the fermenting ale. After an hour or so, the airlock started bubbling. It bubbled for about 7 more days, much longer than I expected, so there must have been more sugar in the grapes than I thought. Then it stopped and I let it sit for a couple of days to settle down. Then I tested it, and it had a gravity of 1.014 or so. That’s higher than I usually get when I brew my other fruit ales up, but it didn’t seem to be fermenting anymore, so I primed and bottled it, with some reservations.
That was a couple weeks ago, and I tested it for the first time by opening a bottle and drinking it. It’s just fine. It got much less color from the grape skins than I thought, looking a bit like a pale red ale. It’s nicely carbonated. I like my bottle-primed homebrews lightly carbonated, though. The skins did impart a sourness, which is mild compared to a real sour, but welcome to me because I don’t really like sours that much, and this seems like just enough for me. It’s quite clear and light-bodied.
All-in-all, not bad for a shot in the dark ale. If I make another go at making wine from grapes I pick, I’ll add more grapes to see if I can get more color from them. I only used about half of what I had this time because there wasn’t enough room for more grapes in the fermenter.
In November, I started my first batch of red wine after I was invited to pick Cabernet Sauvignon grapes, for a fee, from a nice hillside vineyard not too far away.
A by-product of that was 4 gallons or so of fermented Cabernet Sauvignon grapes with the juice (wine) squeezed out. They were quite dry.
I’m sort of a seat-of-the-pants brewer, and try to use what’s convenient and available to brew my beers, or ciders, since I have apple trees, too. I don’t like to waste anything, so I brew these fruit beers to use up the excessive abundance of the fruit. My wife and I can, bake, dry, freeze fruit all summer long.
So when I looked at the grapes, for which I had paid $70, I thought I’d brew me up some grape lees beer.
I looked about to see what other folks had done, and grape lees seem rarely used, so I decided to do what I usually do and just start a batch of ale fermenting, and add the grapes in a brewing bag after fermentation starts to wane, and leave it in there for a week or so until the ale was fully fermented.
I expected that the resulting product would be purplish, with some tannins from the skins and perhaps a little additional alcohol from residual sugars, unlikely since the wine squeezed from the grape lees was zeroed out.
So that’s what I did. I have a FastFermenter, so I shoot for 7 gallons of finished product. I started with about 7 gallons of tap water and 9 lbs. of ultralight liquid malt extract. I didn’t use any other grains or flavors because I wanted whatever grape flavor I got to be the focus. I added 1 ounce of 1-year old Chinook whole cone hops when it came to a boil, and another ounce at about 10 minutes from turning the gas off. I put in half of a fining tablet with about 15 minutes to go.
After I got the wort into the FastFermenter, I added a cup or so of saved Safale US05 from a previous batch. It started sending up bubbles through the airlock in 8 hours or so, and it continued for five days and slowed a little bit. I had to go somewhere for a few days, so I put about 4 pounds of squeezed grapes into the fermenter with the fermenting ale. After an hour or so, the airlock started bubbling. It bubbled for about 7 more days, much longer than I expected, so there must have been more sugar in the grapes than I thought. Then it stopped and I let it sit for a couple of days to settle down. Then I tested it, and it had a gravity of 1.014 or so. That’s higher than I usually get when I brew my other fruit ales up, but it didn’t seem to be fermenting anymore, so I primed and bottled it, with some reservations.
That was a couple weeks ago, and I tested it for the first time by opening a bottle and drinking it. It’s just fine. It got much less color from the grape skins than I thought, looking a bit like a pale red ale. It’s nicely carbonated. I like my bottle-primed homebrews lightly carbonated, though. The skins did impart a sourness, which is mild compared to a real sour, but welcome to me because I don’t really like sours that much, and this seems like just enough for me. It’s quite clear and light-bodied.
All-in-all, not bad for a shot in the dark ale. If I make another go at making wine from grapes I pick, I’ll add more grapes to see if I can get more color from them. I only used about half of what I had this time because there wasn’t enough room for more grapes in the fermenter.
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