Last year I used about 10 lbs of fruit which produced a very nice raspberry flavor. This year, given my extra yield I'm going to try it with 15 lbs. I am hoping this doesn't completely overwhelm the base beer. I think there is a risk that this will seem more like a raspberry wine than a beer - we'll see.
I'll be blending the base beer for this using 12 fermenters of Flanders Red that I've been aging for the last 4 years. I have a really nice assortment of flavors to choose from (reference the 2018 tasting notes). Given that I'll get a lot of sourness from the fruit I will make a bulk of the blend using the less sour/more mild tasting beers.
Based on that criteria, I have chosen the following beers:
- Fermenter #5:
- Tasting Notes:
- Aroma: Earthy and leathery brett character most prominent. A bit of fruit
- Appearance: Orangish red and very clear
- Flavor: Lightly sour with a citrus quality. Very mild brett character as well. Maybe a bit of mineral flavor in the finish.
- Mouthfeel: Has a bit of a sharp twang that hits the back of the throat
- Overall: Mild flavored and not very complex
- Volume:
- 2 gal
- Fermenter #9:
- Tasting Notes:
- Aroma: Rich fruit aroma with a bit of earthy and leathery brett character. A bit of a mineral aroma
- Appearance: Dark orange with a slight haze
- Flavor: Very lightly sour. Has a bit of a band aid like brett character
- Mouthfeel: Slight prickling in the palate
- Overall: Pretty mild flavor and not very complex
- Volume:
- 1 gal
- Fermenter #10:
- Tasting Notes:
- Aroma: Fruity with some leathery funk
- Appearance: Orange and slightly hazy
- Flavor: Lightly sour with a lot of brett character - this is earthy and leathery with a slight band aid flavor
- Mouthfeel: Slight prickling
- Overall: Bold flavors with a lot going on. Wouldn't want to drink a whole glass of this but could add some nice complexity to one of the blander beers.
- Volume:
- 2 gal
I'll let the beer age on the raspberries for 3-6 months before bottling. I expect that all the sugar will ferment out in this period. I'll backsweeten it to 1.016 or so with invert syrup and then pasteurize it in a hot water bath once it has carbonated nicely. I did this last time for all my 2017 Flanders Reds (Plain, Cherry, and Raspberry) and found that the sweetness balances out the flavor profile nicely.
In addition to this beer I'm brewing up a Plain, Cherry, and Spiced Flanders Reds. I have made an attempt to use 1-3 gal from each of the fermenter. This will make room for a bit of fresh top up beer in each so that I'll keep the microbes alive until next year.
Blending Notes:
- 12/31/18:
- Blended together the three beers in the volumes noted above
- Added 4 1 gal bags of raspberries which ended up being 15.7 lbs
- Stirred everything with the auto-siphon
- Setup the bucket with a 3 piece airlock
- 8/17/19 - Bottled the beer today with 2 lbs of invert #2 (cooked to 265 F) and a packet of white wine yeast. Collected about 6 gal that got me 61 bottles. I will let this carbonate for the next week or so. Once it's carbonated up I'll pasteurize to leave a bit of sweetness.
- 9/5/19 - These have been pretty slow and uneven carbonating. A random sampling today found one only lightly carbonated still, one pretty much at the right level, and one over carbonated (such that it gushes out of the bottle and makes a mess). I'm not sure what went wrong (probably uneven sugar distribution) but I've decided to bottle pasteurize today. Heating the bottles in a 150 F waterbath for 20-30 min.
- 5/23/20 - Tasting Notes - I think the raspberry and base Flanders red get along very nicely. The fruit dominates but the beer shines through enough to keep it interesting. Definitely a little on the dry side of the balance scale - could have done with some more back sweetening
No comments:
Post a Comment