Saturday, February 25, 2012

Racking on Puree

So, as you may remember, SheppyBrew is brewing an Apricot Lovin' Wheat Ale (see Apricot Lovin' Brew Day if you want to refresh your memory).

My last real fruit beer was a failure. My fifth batch of beer in March of 2009 was called "Girly Berry" that I brewed with raspberry flavoring specifically for the Beer Model to enjoy. She didn't like it that much. After that batch, I changed the "Girly Berry" recipe by simply pulling out the fruit flavoring. The new non-fruit attempt turned out great, and so the subsequent batches of "Girly Berry" contained no fruit or fruit extract at all. 

This failure was early on in my brewing career, but I have just never had the desire to try another fruit beer. Recently, though, one of the Pastors at my church (who will forthwith be called "Chad" on this blog so I don't have to keep typing "one of the pastors at my church") requested an apricot wheat beer, and I decided to go ahead and give fruit beer brewing another try. For Apricot Lovin', though I got some recipe advice from my LHBS and Dry Dock Brewing Company, so I think I should be ok.

Part of the recipe / process is adding 3lbs of Apricot Puree to a secondary fermentor and racking the partially fermented beer on top of the fruit. I had already decided to get another carboy, and so brewing this beer was an excuse to use a gift card I had for an order to Northern Brewer. The order came in this week, and on Thursday I finally added the fruit into the new carboy and put the base beer on top of the fruit.

I tasted the flat base beer and thought it was great. I face-booked "Chad" that if the apricot ruins the beer he can expect a couple of cases.

I am planning on leaving the beer on the fruit for a couple weeks or so. If it turns out good, I'll let you know. If it turns out bad, Chad will get a bunch of beer.

No comments:

Post a Comment