sumac

[bluemoose]

Sorry I don't have pictures. You can recreate this though.
Go ahead and puke into a 1 gallon container. Done? Now you know what it looks like.

Seriously, the vodka extract was blood red. Mixing with the wheat, which was fairly light, gave it a light pink color. I'll try to take pictures of the poor bastards that have to taste it when it is done!

 

[COLObrewer]

Just wondered if your sumac looks like our sumac. You said cones?

 

[bluemoose]

Yes, Staghorn Sumac. It has a red cone like fruit that is a bit fuzzy. They grow pointing up. There are 250 or so varieties of sumac. White fruit equals baaaaad. The red is good for a tart drink. They grow all over the country. While what you have might not be exactly what we have here, it may be close.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhus_typhina

This will give you an idea of what we have.

 

[Oscbert]

Thanks for the update. I am really curious to know about the taste at the different levels.

 

[bluemoose]

From tasting the Vodka that was used to steep the sumac it might be very interesting. I thought my face might implode from how tart it was.
Here's hoping!

 

[bluemoose]

OK, got this into bottles today. It had been in secondary for two weeks. It got away from me as I have been really busy at work.

The good news is I didn't puke when I tasted it. The 16 oz was really very tart, but I think with time it may be ok. The others tasted pretty good. It will be interesting to taste them all in 3 weeks. I will be having some people over to try each one.

Any suggestions of a food to clense your palette in between beers?

I'll post when I try them.

 

[DoubleAught]

Any suggestions of a food to clense your palette in between beers?

I'll post when I try them.

Most beer tastings I have been too have had pretzels on the counter.

 

[frydogbrews]

those berries might not have been ripe. staghorn grows here as well and it doesn't actually ripen until mid fall. i realize you are in vermont and i am in missouri, but i can't imagine staghorn ripening before leaves start changing color. the red color of the berries does not indicate ripeness, much like an apple that is red long before it is ripe. i'm going to try making it into a cider this year, since it is hard to get good tart apples.

 

[Oscbert]

French Bread or salt free crackers and water make a great pallette cleanser.

 

[bluemoose]

Tried this tonight. Had 6 people come over and try all five. We started with the least amount and worked our way up. The two most popular were the 4 oz. and the 12 oz.

Here's the way I saw it:

2 oz tasted like a straight wheat with a slight hint of fruit in the after taste. It was not great because I believe there was not quite enough hops to balance the sumac. The lack of a typical hop schedule was not compensated for by only two ounces of the sumac concentrate.

4 oz was the popular favorite of 4 out of 6 people. The other two were wine drinkers. It had a good initial flavor, without much after taste. A bit of a dry feel in the mouth after swallowing.

8 oz to my surprise was not a croud favorite. I'm not sure why. It lacked something. It reminded one taster of a Magic Hat #9.

12 oz was the favorite of the wine drinkers. I think it was much drier and had a bit of the tart fruit taste on both the initial sip and the after taste. It was not your typical beer type flavor, more toward the wine side.

16 oz is probably way too much. The first thing I noticed is that the bottle had very little carbonation. I wonder if this is from the vodka concentration. 16 ounces of vodka to 112 ounces of beer. It was pretty tart, and not something that anyone would be willing to drink more than a couple of sips. I think the rest of these will sit in the basement for a while to condition.

So there you go. It was not earth shattering, but I fully intend to drink them all, with the possible exception of the last one. I don't think anyone would have a problem of drinking one or two. Certainly not the best I've made, but drinkable. It is probably something I would try again and tweak the initial recipe with a something a bit hoppier.

 

[Oscbert]

Awesome! Thanks for the update. Looks like it was good enough for you to want to keep experimenting with it. You may be the only one in the world that has made a good Sumac beer.

 

[oxybrew]

I just made a couple of 1 gallon sumac "beers" based on the infamous and famous Graff. I actually kept it very close to the Graff recipe only used sumacade as the base rather than apple juice. It is actually my favorite Graff so far and I have made many, many batches of Graff in the past.

 

[bluemoose]

Excellent, love to see the recipe for that.

 

[unionrdr]

That second link looks like what grows wild around here,particularly around train tracks/bridges. I always thought they looked like a jungle tree. I wondered why the local birds,& migrating ones are always fighting over the best clumps of berries. The guy behind me has them covering the ridge of the ravine out back. Might see if I can get some...

 

[oxybrew]

Bluemoose, I will find my notes and send the exact recipe. But basically I used the grains, DME and hops per the Graff recipe and used the Sumacade as the base rather than apple juice. It really is my favorite "Graff" by far. Actually it is a Sumac beer. Try it and let me know. I really think we may be onto something. ALthough, I am not really sure how many people would actually be interested in a Sumac beer.

 

[unionrdr]

I've been pondering using the sumacade as part of the top off liquid in a wheat ale. Would the flavor of the sumacade be ok at,say,2G out of 6G?

 

[bluemoose]

You might want to go a little lower on the ade. I have found in my itchy ale that the concentration of 8 oz of concentrate with 1 gallon is quite enough. I know we are not talking the same thing as you would be using sumacade, but it is powerful stuff.
I would be a bit concerned about the possibility of infection with straight sumac ade as there in no really good way to wash the sumac. That is why I went with a concentrate. I am interested to find out if it comes out ok.

 

[2hennepin6]

This thread is very old I realize. Any further forays into brewing with sumac? I am considering splitting my saison (10 gallon brew this weekend) into 3 variants, one with sumac .

 

[Jzrp]

I use one campden tablet per gallon of wine must. You're not really going to have wine must, just crushed fruit. But it would be similar, I'd say. Dissolve the campden tablets (crush first) in the water, stir well, and pour over the fruit (already in the mesh bag, to make life easier) and cover. That will work just fine.

Linked to this thread from another about sanitising fresh fruit pre adding to the secondary….

One thing I get confused about with campden tablets is they are used to stop fermentation in some cases right? (Wine)

I use one every brew day in the liquor for beer but if I wash 4-5kg of strawberries in a campden tablet solution before freezing etc and eventually adding to my secondary, will it interfere with the ability of the fruit to be fermented out?

I have made fruit beers before to good effect but using large fruit like watermelon where I have star sanned the outside before cutting up the flesh and freezing / re freezing etc. Or with smaller fruit soaking in vodka. With this many strawberries that would mean adding a lot of vodka!

 

[Yooper]

Linked to this thread from another about sanitising fresh fruit pre adding to the secondary….

One thing I get confused about with campden tablets is they are used to stop fermentation in some cases right? (Wine)

I use one every brew day in the liquor for beer but if I wash 4-5kg of strawberries in a campden tablet solution before freezing etc and eventually adding to my secondary, will it interfere with the ability of the fruit to be fermented out?

I have made fruit beers before to good effect but using large fruit like watermelon where I have star sanned the outside before cutting up the flesh and freezing / re freezing etc. Or with smaller fruit soaking in vodka. With this many strawberries that would mean adding a lot of vodka!

No- first of all, the amount needed for sanitation (death to microbes!) is more than what you’d typically use in a beer. To stop fermentation in wine, you’d need to use so much the wine would be undrinkable.

When you add it to wine must, at 1 campden tablet per gallon, you generally let the must sit for 24 hours and then add your yeast. That allows much of the sulfur dioxide to disparate. However, wine yeast is amazingly tolerant of sulfites.

Sanitize your crushed fruit with 1 campden tablet per gallon of crushed fruit, allow that to sit about 24 hours and then freeze if you’d like.

 

[Jzrp]

No- first of all, the amount needed for sanitation (death to microbes!) is more than what you’d typically use in a beer. To stop fermentation in wine, you’d need to use so much the wine would be undrinkable.

When you add it to wine must, at 1 campden tablet per gallon, you generally let the must sit for 24 hours and then add your yeast. That allows much of the sulfur dioxide to disparate. However, wine yeast is amazingly tolerant of sulfites.

Sanitize your crushed fruit with 1 campden tablet per gallon of crushed fruit, allow that to sit about 24 hours and then freeze if you’d like.

Cheers for the reply Yooper. I needed to crack on so I just made a campden tablet solution and washed the fruit in batches. But I only soaked it for an hour or something. Is that likely to be a problem? That I didn’t leave it for 24 hours. The fruit is in the freezer so worst case scenario I could bin and get more fruit rather than ruin a whole beer

 

[Jzrp]

Ps I just crushed a couple of campden tablets, diluted in a really big mixing bowl with water. I did the same thing for each batch to get rid of the scuff