by AdobeStock/Olga Kazanovskaia
Ingredients
- Fruit
- 6 pounds red wine grapes of your choice, or wine grape purée
- Malt (for an OG of 1.057 and 6 SRM)
- 4 pounds Vienna malt
- 4 pounds light liquid malt extract
- Hops (for 16 IBU)
- 1 ounce 4 percent alpha acid Hallertau hops, or hops of your choice
- Yeast and Bacteria (for an FG of 1.005 and 6.8 percent ABV)
- Commercial yeast and bacteria blend for sour beer
Other
- 2 ounces oak cubes, soaked in red wine
- 4 ounces corn sugar for bottle conditioning
Directions
- Destem and crush the wine grapes. Place them in a sanitized bucker fermenter.
- Crush the Vienna malt and place it in a nylon steeping bag. Steep the bag in a brewpot at 152 degrees Fahrenheit for 45 minutes. Remove the steeping bag and set aside.
- Add enough water to the brewpot to bring it up to 3 gallons. Dissolve roughly half of the malt extract in the brewpot, and then bring it to a boil. Add the hops at the beginning of the boil, and then boil for 60 minutes.
- Chill the wort and transfer it to the bucket fermenter with the grapes. Add enough water to bring it up to 5 gallons. Aerate and pitch the yeast. Ferment at 70 degrees. Let ferment to completion, and then condition, at roughly the same temperatures, for 6 months.
- Rack the beer to a secondary fermenter, away from the grape solids. Add the oak cubes. Let the beer condition for 2 weeks.
- Keg and carbonate the beer to 2.6 volumes of CO2, or prime with corn sugar, and then bottle.
This is a sour beer with wine grape flavor and a hint of oak. It needs to be fermented for at least 6 months, but a longer fermentation–up to a year–will improve its taste. It should age much better than most beers, so set a couple bottles aside for extended aging.
Yield: 5 gallons.
Learn more about rosé beer here.
Chris Colby is a writer with a background in biology and brewing. He lives with his wife and their cats in Bastrop, Texas. Chris enjoys gardening and drinking beer while admiring his garden.
