fennel grape maibock?

[fredstock99]

so admittedly, this will sound lame, but it turned out drinkable, and has alcohol in it.
i took the midas touch clone... decided i didn't want to search for muscat grapes, or spend money on saffron, so i bought frozen concentrated grape juice (1 can), had about a pound of leftover frozen grapes, and some whole fennel seeds. also decided against following most of the rest of the recipe since, i didn't have time to make it to the LHBS. here's how it went...

steeped
0.5lb Vienna and
0.75lb American Crystal 40L
between 160-170 for 60 mins.

boil:
6lb light DME
0.5lb wheat DME
1 can pure concord grape juice concentrate
1lb whole green grapes

hops = 1oz Saaz (60min), 0.5oz Mt. Hood(15min).

yeast (this is weird) made a starter out of a 5g red star cuvee yeast and some DME 2 days before. then pitched it with an 11.5g safelager dry yeast pack. got good strong bubbling after a couple of hours, and still got a bubble every 5 seconds 3 days after i pitched.

5 gallon batch. OG=1.062. FG=1.015. 14days primary(laziness)\11days secondary. primed with 5oz packet of priming sugar.


now i am obviously pretty new to homebrewing, and this was only our 5th batch, but after some aging, it tastes decent, although is pretty cloudy, and leaves your mouth nice and fennel fresh. do i recommend this beer? something similar maybe, with slightly less fennel, and somehow less cloudy would be pretty good. any thoughts\strong desire to smack me upside my head and tell me to stop brewing bastardized beer?

 

[zoebisch01]

now i am obviously pretty new to homebrewing, and this was only our 5th batch, but after some aging, it tastes decent, although is pretty cloudy, and leaves your mouth nice and fennel fresh. do i recommend this beer? something similar maybe, with slightly less fennel, and somehow less cloudy would be pretty good. any thoughts\strong desire to smack me upside my head and tell me to stop brewing bastardized beer?

Lol. Well I think you answered your own question. Perhaps some tweaking to get the recipe where you want it? Although you may feel odd about it (probably mostly because what others will think ), what is important (imo) is that you brew what you like.

One way to control the Fennel is to either peck-and-hunt for the proper amount in the recipe, or (what I would recommend) is to steep the seeds in some boiled water to make a 'tea' as it is much more controllable that way. Add the tea into the secondary to taste. Sending it through fermentation is a little more like shooting in the dark because the flavors tend to get scrubbed out. At any rate, I'd also recommend weighing the amount of Fennel you use for the most consistent results in the future.