More fruit wit madness

[TheMumbler]

Following my earlier go at fruit wits documented here I'm thinking of doing another lot. Possibly a split ferment on different fruit again. I certainly won't bother with a cereal mash and will use more wheat malt instead as the fruit flavours are so strong. I also think I'll avoid any artificial sweetners as you can taste the splenda IMO. Maybe lactose or maybe just accept the sourness.

The guy who gave me the blackberries for the previous one has some redcurrants, so I'm tempted to give them a whirl, but what else? Any thoughts?

[lancsSteve]

Malted spelt instead of wheat?

Split it and do a sour one with my berlinner weisse culture?

Could do a BIG mash and boil and then split them for fermenting

[TheMumbler]

If you fancy doing a big joint brewday for a variety of wits on your fancy pants kit that is fine by me

I have quite a bit of base malt in atm, so a big brew at some point would suit me. Perhaps a barley wine/bitter or Imperial Stout/Mild?

Split mash boil and then split for fermenting is fine as the fruit goes into secondary. Lots of possibilities I suppose. I imagine the redcurrants will make it really rather tart. I'm tempted to do gooseberry again and omit the sweetner. Rich was talking about pie cherries (in Morrissons I think) as a possible source for a decent cherry taste. Kiwi is supposed to be good in a wit too.

The fruit taste in the previous attempt is quite powerful so I'm not sure how much benefit you would get from spelt. Happy to bung some in if you have it about though.

[dave-o]

If you're worried about the sugars, why not just brew a bog standard wit and then add some fruit syrup when you pour, such as the Owocowy ones?

It means you're not married to one particular fruit/taste for the entire batch.

[Barley Water]

Make up a brown ale of about 1.065 OG with very little in the way of hops. Ferment it with whatever ale yeast floats you boat, I would use a Belgian strain myself but whatever. After a week in the primary, rack it to secondary and hit it with some Rosalarie blend. Let the stuff sit for about a year or so, that way it gets good and sour. In the meantime, take the fruit you get from your friend, wash it and put it in a plastic freezer bag and just throw it in the freezer. Once the ale is nice and sour, thaw out the fruit, put it into a suitable container (not sterilized by the way, pits and all) and rack the ale on top of it. Let the whole thing go for another 6 months or so. You should now have some seriously sour, very high octane fruit ale which you can now bottle (I wouldn't keg the stuff myself as that would be dangerous). That fruit is going to have some bugs on the skin ('cause you didn't sterilize it) so the ale should be exteremly interesting, hopefully with fruit flavor but it will not be sweet, it should be pretty damn tart.

I have an Oud Bruin solera going at home, some of the beer in that thing is 3 years old now. If I can get my grubby little paws on some sour cherries, that is exactly what I am going to do with roughly 1/2 the keg (I have 5 gallons of the stuff). What I'll do is make up another batch of beer, once I get the primary fermentation done with the "normal" yeast, I'll drop in some fresh Rosalarie blend, fill up the solera with 1/2 the batch and blend the fruit ale with the other 1/2 then just let if go for awhile. With luck, I should get kind of a sweet/sour effect, the old beer does the sour, the new beer does the sweet. By the way, if you opt to try something like this, make sure that no air gets to the beer otherwise you will end up with high grade vinegar.

As an aside, I got a taste of my Abby Single this last weekend while I was bottling my Triple. I think the beer came out really well, I will for sure do it again. I may well use a different yeast strain next time just as an experiement. Anyhow, once I have room I will put it on tap, I bet it won't last too long.

[Cazamodo]

I like this idea, I have so many demijons lying about Id like to do a few different fruit batches...
As the fruits added to the secondary, could I ferment in one batch, and split the primary to different fruits?
As splitting the primary into demijons is going to reult in a lot of blow-off mess I imagine, which I could save by using a bucket.

I was thinking of doing a strawberry a while ago...

[arturobandini]

Hey Mumbler, this is very interesting stuff. I'm not a huge fruit wit fan as the most commercial stuff available tends to be a bit too sweet but I have enjoyed a couple of tarter varieties and that gooseberry beer of yours sounds right up my street minus the Splenda.

I come with an alterior motive though as I have 4 litres of this popular Hoegaarden-ish recipe that is destined for a fruit twist. I am planning to decant it into a sterilised demijohn with a good glug of this; http://www.realfoods.co.uk/product/5921 ... ce-organic

I was going to go for one of those cheapo Polish fruit syrups but this was £1.49 in the health shop so I thought in for a penny in for a pound. My plan was to slap 400ml into the demijohn and give it a week to ferment the sucrose and fructose in the ingredients (cherry juice, water and cane sugar) before bottling that. As it is not really for me but for my better half who is a fan of Fruli type beers I may take a taste at bottling before potentially experimenting with Splenda which I resent from the get go and have not heard great things about its use in beers anyway.

Thoughts and ideas most welcome, you've given me something to think about by using real fruit though!

[TheMumbler]

Glad it is of use arturobandini. Nice to do something a bit out there once in a while

I only used a little splenda in the gooseberry ( 1tsp per 500ml) and I kind of regret it. It is still pretty tart though. I've thought about lactose as it doesn't give it the artificial sweetner taste but then it might get hoovered up by any rogue bacteria from the fruit.

For the sake of a DJs worth I'd certainly give the fruit syrup a go you may find that it imparts less flavour than you would imagine though and it will ramp up the abv. You might want to try and work out how much sugar you are adding as I guess you might be at risk of spoiling it with too much. Real fruit does give it a great taste but it is a faff and risks infection. Having done it once I think I'd probably avoid the sweetner and either use lactose or sweeten with syrup when drinking like they do with berlinner weisse when I do more fruit beer. Maybe you could hold a bottle of the cherry stuff to use as a mixer in case it is too tart for your other (better) half.

richc was saying something about pie cherries at morrissons I guess stuff like that and jam would be something to explore so long as they don't have any artificial preservatives in them.