Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Fruit Beer?

Some brewers/drinkers feel that fruit beers are not beers, or are girly, or all suck. In a lot of cases I would agree (Sam Adams Cherry Wheat....ewwww). But there are some really good ones, especially the sour fruit beers were only real fruit is usually used and in a high amount during secondary fermentation. This makes the fruit flavor really taste fresh and like the real fruit. In Brussels I had my first real strawberry lambic, smelling the beer was exactly like smelling strawberry jam, it was amazing (the flavor was not as intense, but it was still and excellent beer).
Anyway, I have a couple fruit beers in progress and a couple planned, just wanted to document:

Fermenting:

- Quad/Old Ale w/cherries in barrel souring
- Quad/Old Ale w/cherries in carboy (unsour) - added three more pounds of cherries last night, tasted before this and was excellent but needed more cherry flavor to be a real 'fruit beer'

Planned:

-Mango Tripel - Sunday I spent about an hour and a half peeling mangoes from Tyler, Matt M, and my neighbor. The mangoes were almost all small, but yielded three pounds of flesh. I have one pound of frozen from the grocer and will buy one more pound for a total of 5 pounds for 5 gallons of beer (1lb/gallon). I really like using locals fruit and want the name of the beer to reflect that, something like Neighborhood Terroir Tripel, or something).

- Blueberry Sour - Inspired by the current #8 beer on beeradvocate, which I have not tried despite visiting the brewery in Brussels, Cantillon's Blabaer (Blueberry), I will be brewing three gallons (I have three pounds of blueberries) of a Sour Blueberry Ale (60%pils,40%wheat) with Cantillon yeast.

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