Raisins for carbonation?

[ScootersAle]

This is really interesting. Was thinking about making a high gravity spiced/winter beer early next year for next xmas. Would be interesting to carb it with raisins

 

[JustusLiebig]

Three raisins carbed perfectly

Well it sure looks good to me, but how does it taste?
Scooter, a spiced beer sounds like a great idea. I'm salivating about using them in a nut brown ale to accentuate that plum and raisin flavor.
Hell, use it in a farmhouse ale.

 

[Bradinator]

I am also interested in hearing if the raisins added anything to the final product outside of good carbonation.

Also, how long did you let it bottle condition for?

 

[DacotahBrewing]

Sorry I didn't give much information in my last post. A fellow Brewer and I were attempting to make an oatmeal raisin cookie beer. We used raisins in the primary as well as spicing it with cinnamon, nutmeg, Ginger, clove, and vanilla. The raisins never came through so the beer is basically a spiced brown ale.

Carbing with raisins added zero flavor. Even with a pound of raisins in primary and using crystal 120 in the malt bill the raisins just never came through.

I would be interested in carbing with other fruit. Figs come to mind.

It has been bottle conditioning for a week and a half.

 

[Revvy]

I'm going to add a link of this discussion to the post in the bottling sticky about alternative priming methods.

 

[DacotahBrewing]

I also want to add that carbing with raisins in other styles might come through better. The beer we used it in had a lot going on with spicing and the malt bill. It could add a nice complexity to a saison.

Also be aware that when you pour from the bottle the raisins will be floating and stripped of their color. Your friends might not like the sight of off-white solids floating in their beer.

 

[DRonco]

Three raisins carbed perfectly

One more thought, what size bottles did you use? I wonder if you'd scale the amount of raisins to fit the size of your bottle, considering the volume of beer will vary slightly.

I'll be packaging a Patersbier in a couple weeks. I'm considering this for a couple of them.

Thanks for your feedback!

 

[DacotahBrewing]

One more thought, what size bottles did you use? I wonder if you'd scale the amount of raisins to fit the size of your bottle, considering the volume of beer will vary slightly.

I'll be packaging a Patersbier in a couple weeks. I'm considering this for a couple of them.

Thanks for your feedback!

We used 12oz bottles. We did fill one bomber and doubled the raisins to 6. I am not sure why we chose to double them. I suspect it will be a bottle bomb but who knows. I will follow up when I know.

 

[DacotahBrewing]

I want to give some more feedback now that it has been a few weeks.

I have had both raisin carbed beer and the corn sugar primed beer side by side and have not found much different.

What I have found different is the raisins carbed the beer more than the measured sugar did. We primed half the batch to 2.2 Vols and we used 3 raisins in each bottle for the other half. The raisin batch seems to have a little more carbonation.

I still can not confirm any sort of flavor from the raisins. I feel like there is a very, very slight difference between the two, but I am unsure if its because I know they are different. I think I will have to do a blind tasting with a few people and see if they can find a difference.

I will say that the carbonating with the raisins has leveled off. I know there were some people that thought the raisins would add some wild yeast, but I do not think this will be the case. Maybe we got lucky (we did not sanitize the fruit in any way, and we dropped them into bottles with unsanitized hands). We used organic raisins with no sulfites or preservatives.

I also have not found any inconsistencies with the carbonation. We did not pick through the raisins to find like sizes -- we used whatever we grabbed, but only 3. Smaller, larger, medium, whatever. The odd thing that I have been finding is, as I pour the beer, and subsequently the raisins, all 3 of the raisins have swelled to almost exactly the same size.

I am interested to hear what others will find. It seems as though there are a few other people out there that are giving this a try. I say it's worth the experiment. I have not, in any way, found this practice to ruin the beer.

 

[DRonco]

I'm going to try to bottle my Patersbier on Sunday. I plan to do this experiment on a few of them.

 

[yso191]

I'm planning to brew a Baltic Porter around Christmas. I'd like to add a bit of raisin flavor. What amount do you think would work in a 5 gallon keg? My first 3 batches I force carbonated, but I can't imagine it would hurt anything to carbonate it this way and then hook it to co2 to serve. What do you think?

Steve

 

[graduate]

Raisins host yeast on their surface.

Made a brandy along time ago that used no yeast, just raisins.

 

[Tantalus]

This is perhaps the ultimate alternative carbonation technique. Will try it out ASAP - seems more reliable then bottling sugar.

 

[DacotahBrewing]

This is perhaps the ultimate alternative carbonation technique. Will try it out ASAP - seems more reliable then bottling sugar.

Well I don't know if I would say more reliable. So far it seems to be pretty damn consistent. I did mention the carbonation has leveled off but I plan to keep a few bottles and age for a while to make sure no bugs take hold.

 

[DacotahBrewing]

I'm planning to brew a Baltic Porter around Christmas. I'd like to add a bit of raisin flavor. What amount do you think would work in a 5 gallon keg? My first 3 batches I force carbonated, but I can't imagine it would hurt anything to carbonate it this way and then hook it to co2 to serve. What do you think?

Steve

Well, you have one advantage in that if you do too many raisins you can purge the gas and shake the carbonation out of the beer. If only it worked that easily with bottles.

If you scale the raisins up from 3 per bottle (assuming 48 bottles per 5 gallons) you could try 144 raisins.

A better way to do it would go off of weight, but like I said earlier I would suspect our weights to be inconsistent.

When I have the notes handy from the bottling day I could punch some numbers and figure out a good figure to go off of (or at least my thought process as to what you could do).

 

[DacotahBrewing]

Raisins host yeast on their surface.

I am curious about this. I do not really know how yeast works outside of bread and beer. My question is -- if there were still yeast on the skins of the raisins wouldn't it ferment the raisins in the package and make it swell? Wouldn't the same thing happen to apples or grapes if they were not treated? Or do the skins provide protection from the yeast so they do not ferment?

 

[boscobeans]

I am curious about this. I do not really know how yeast works outside of bread and beer. My question is -- if there were still yeast on the skins of the raisins wouldn't it ferment the raisins in the package and make it swell? Wouldn't the same thing happen to apples or grapes if they were not treated? Or do the skins provide protection from the yeast so they do not ferment?

Fermentation also needs water. If you dumped the raisins in water any yeast on the surface would begin the process.

 

[Friedclutch]

What if a raisin got stuck in your keg pick up tube?! Plugged! Either way, I am so trying this. Maybe I will drop the raisins in some SS for a minute. I have a pale ale ready to keg this weekend. I will fill a few 20 oz bottles.. Maybe 4 raisins?

 

[mooshimanx]

What if a raisin got stuck in your keg pick up tube?! Plugged! Either way, I am so trying this. Maybe I will drop the raisins in some SS for a minute. I have a pale ale ready to keg this weekend. I will fill a few 20 oz bottles.. Maybe 4 raisins?

I'd really have to question if a raisin could ever get up there. The pickup tube in a keg is designed to get practically every drop of liquid out. I don't think even a regular raisin would get up there, much less one that's been soaking in beer the whole time (since it would rehydrate and expand a little bit).

As for wild yeasts on the surface, although I typically poo-poo dunking foodstuffs in Star-San, I have to imagine a 30 second soak in Star San would be alright to kill anything off of the skin given that I think it would take quite a bit of time for the fluid to get under the raisin's skin.

 

[dude1]

A few more days to go, we'll see what it gives!

 

[TandemTails]

A few more days to go, we'll see what it gives!

awesome! What beer are you carbing with the raisins?

Also, has anyone eaten the raisins after carbing with them? I think it would be pretty funny to see the look on someone's face who pours the beer without being warned there were raisins in the bottle.

 

[dude1]

I'm following the "Prohibition Ale" recipe from the "Beer Making Book" by the Brooklyn Brew Shop.

So my all-grain recipe for 10L gives:

Malt
1.45kg Maris Otter
360g Vienna
90g Special B (or Special W)

Single infusion at 67°C for 60' + 10' mash-out at 77°C

Hops
28g Bramling Cross (or UK Kent Golding) in 2 halves: 60' and 30'
10g Whitbread Golding (or UK Kent Golding) in 3 thirds: 15', 5' and 0'

Yeast
Safale S-04

For priming, put exactly 4 dried raisins per 12oz bottle and let carbonate for at least 3-4 weeks as raisins carbonation is slower

 

[dude1]

It definitely takes a while to condition.
After 3 weeks, it still has a strong egg flavor.
Another week or two should do the job, but the taste is promising.
To be continued.

 

[Revvy]

After 3 weeks, it still has a strong egg flavor.

Not surprising considering sulfur dioxide is used as a preservative/anti oxidyzing compound in the commercial drying of fruits.

Sulfur dioxide might not sound good enough to eat, but this food preservative does make its way into a number of edibles, including dried fruits such as raisins, dried apricots and prunes.

Not sure if it will condition out the same way sulfur compounds from yeast does. I'm not sure if it's sprayed on the grapes, the grapes are soaked in a solution, or it's burned in the fields and the smoke coats the fruit. You may be able to leach it out of the raisins by soaking them first and doing water changes before using them in bottling.

I bet most health food stores would carry non Sulfur Dioxide dried fruits.