help on tips about adding wine grapes to a Lambic

[Metalhead_brewer]

hi guys i'm planning on brew my first sour beer, and as i live in a town with a lot of vineyards around is easy for me to get my hands on some varieties of wine grapes so i decided to try some in my recipe, but some questions come to my mind as they are not tipical freezed pasteurized fruits from the groceries store, and they have a lot of brett, lacto, and pedio, as well as a ton of other wild yeast and bugs on top(for what i read), my plan is to ferment first with regular yeast and then pour the beer in secondary on top of some pounds of fresh grapes with the wyeast 3278 yeast and let them be for 6-8 months, my questions are:

-should i just throw the grapes in without lambic yeast and let the natural yeast in the peel of the grapes do their job.

-or just throw the grapes with a simple rinse in water to remove dust and dirt and go with it.

-i thought to soak the grapes in some campden solution before adding it to the beer but, the residual solution in the grapes won't kill the lambic yeast blend in the pouch? as they are bugs too.

Any of you has worked with grapes in lambics?
i would like to see your thoughts or experiences in working with grapes

Thank you all

 

[jfolks]

Based on my experience...

1) make sour beer before adding the grapes (so age for 6 months or so on your microbe blend before adding grapes)

2) just rinse the grapes with cool water, crush them, then add them to the beer. No other treatment necessary

3) 6 weeks on grapes is plenty of time. Too long (especially if you have some stems in there) can get too tannic

 

[andrewmaixner]

see "grapes" under this section for lots of links:
http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Soured_Fruit_Beer#Specific_notes_on_select_fruit_varieties

 

[Metalhead_brewer]

Based on my experience...

1) make sour beer before adding the grapes (so age for 6 months or so on your microbe blend before adding grapes)

2) just rinse the grapes with cool water, crush them, then add them to the beer. No other treatment necessary

3) 6 weeks on grapes is plenty of time. Too long (especially if you have some stems in there) can get too tannic

Great tips thank you very muchor help!!

see "grapes" under this section for lots of links:
http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Soured_Fruit_Beer#Specific_notes_on_select_fruit_varieties

Awesome info in that link i'll check it out in detail thank you.

 

[foltster]

I personally recommend using finished wine to blend with your sour beer, if you are a homebrewer.

 

[Metalhead_brewer]

I personally recommend using finished wine to blend with your sour beer, if you are a homebrewer.

How much would you recommend to add?

 

[andrewmaixner]

How much would you recommend to add?

Taste a few concentrations: 5%, 7, 10. See what works best with the specific beer and wine.

 

[foltster]

Taste a few concentrations: 5%, 7, 10. See what works best with the specific beer and wine.

Agree on tasting blending ratios. I have used up to 25% of a dry white in a golden sour (5L box blended with 15L beer) or as low as ~4% (1 750ml bold red bottle with 19L of beer)

 

[NBBC13]

when do you blend, after your sour is completely finished and before you bottle or keg?

 

[ten80]

when do you blend, after your sour is completely finished and before you bottle or keg?

YES. Either way works. It is important to let the blend sit for a while before bottling in case any fermentation kicks up, which is a definite possibility when using mixed cultures. I usually blend in a keg and let the keg sit at room temperature for 2-12 months, then prime and bottle, adding fresh yeast that is acid-tolerant (Brett, CBC-1, EC-1118, or DV-10).

There are 1-gallon wine kits available with different grape varietals that should make enough finished wine to blend with 4-5 gallons of finished beer. I've also just poured the undiluted grape concentrate into my beer fermenter once fermentation is almost complete. Wine Expert has quite a few grape concentrate varietals available.

That said, I'd not hesitate to use actual wine grapes if you have some nice ones available. Grocery store grapes are just boring water and sugars with little aroma, so not really worth using. I rinse fruits like grapes with diluted StarSan solution, lightly macerate, and chuck into the fermenter.

 

[JAReeves]

I am experimenting with this right now. I lightly washed the Muscat grapes from my yard, threw them in the freezer to burst cell walls, ran them through the food processor and fermented them with a clean yeast (S-05 I think) to see what the wild yeasts would do. After a couple months I added it to some malt to build up a 1G starter. After a couple months and it still tasting decent, I added it to 4G of Berliner Weiss malt bill beer. I just bottled it and it was a total of 5 1/2 months souring the beer- 8 1/2 months total time from picking grapes for the fermentation.

It equals the tartness of an Ommegang I just had, but is more complex. Not bad for a first sour. The bug mix is going into a Red next and I hope to keep it going for future batches.