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Thursday, May 31, 2012

Summer Fruit Beer Series

Summer is quickly arriving (as it's raining as I type this...).  Summer means warm weather (usually, this is Portland afterall...), BBQ's, and sitting on the porch in the evening enjoying life.  So to go with all three of those, I'll be brewing up some fruit flavored beer.  I typically don't really enjoy these too much, but a lot of other people do, so I'll brew them up to show good hospitality (and to keep their hands off my IPA's).  I decided to do the Trixie again that I did last year that turned out really well.  I also wanted to try something new, so I'll be splitting the batch (10 gallon) in half.  Half with be Trixie (raspberry flavored beer), and the other half will be halved again.  One (2.5 gallons) will be aged with whole strawberries on secondary, the other half will be grapefruit.  I think I'll throw in some amarillo or summit hops with the grapefruit to really try to highlight the grapefruit.  This will be an experiment.  It could be awesome, or it could be horrible, the good thing is that it's only 2.5 gallons and cost me all of $3 or so for the 2.5 gallons.  Total cost of this recipe to me is probably $2 for the beer ingredients (thanks to a kind gift of a 50 pound grain bag on my ledger at Brew Brothers from a good friend) and it'll be another $12 or so for the fruit I'm guessing?  I hope to use real Oregon Strawberries which will really up the quality!  So $14 cost to me isn't too shabby.

Recipe:
10 gallons

Grain:
20 lb GW 2-Row

Anticipated ABV: 5.0%
Original Gravity: 1.050
Final Gravity: 1.013
Strike Water: 7.5 gallons @ 163 degrees
Sparge Water: 9 gallons @ 183 degrees

Hops:
1oz CTZ (16.8%) for 60m

Yeast:
1056 slurries

Extras:
I'll boil 24oz of raspberries in 1/2 gallon of water for about 30 minutes, strain out the chunks, and add that to the secondary for the Trixie (Mcmenamins Ruby Clone) portion.
I'll add a half pound or so of whole strawberries to the 2.5 gallons of one of the experiment fruit beers.
I'll add a couple grapefruits cut into slices to the secondary of the other 2.5 gallons of experiment beers plus maybe an ounce or so of summit or amarillo (probably summit because it's way cheaper than amarillo).

Notes:
Brewed last weekend (5/26/12) and everything went fine.  Fermenting nicely.  Should be ready to transfer to secondary in about a week.  Also I was able to break out the grain dryer only to have it start pouring like I've never seen in Portland a few hours later.  Most of the grain dried pretty well though, so at least there will be something for the chickens!
Update 6/19/12: Sorry for the delay on the update.  I split one bucket into two buckets at secondary.  One I added a grapefruit cut into eighths with 1oz of Summit Hops.  The other got a pint of whole Oregon strawberries (so much better than California or anywhere else).  I let those sit for a week or so and then bottled them last night.  The other buckets I racked to secondary along with 24oz of frozen raspberries that I boiled for 30 minutes, then strained and chilled.  Those have been sitting about a week and will need to be bottled shortly.  I'll update again when I taste each of them.
Taste Update: The early tasting on the raspberry one is that there's a funky flavor.  It's one I've had come up before so it's got to be from the yeast.  Time to get rid of all the 1056 slurry's I have since it's definitely from that.  The flavor isn't bad, it's just not as good as it should be.

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