Sweet low ABV Brewing

[JammyBStard]

I'm trying to put together a recipe for a fruit beer for my girlfreind, she only drinks Lindemans Framboise generally which i know is a very complicated process to replicate without even going in to the lambic business, so I'm looking to do somthing more homebrew freindly.

My question is how do you achive sweet and low ABV, I get the impression the more fruit/sugar/malt I add the higher the ABV will go and I'd like to avoid adding anything after the brew as I dont think this is true brewing.

[Garth]

maybe use a less attentive yeast, I've never used it but I believe Windsor does this.

and keep the hops down, most lasses don't like hoppy beers.

[JammyBStard]

have you any sugestions of yeast? I'm quite new to all this.

[Garth]

Yeah try Windsor yeast, as I said before, is quite a bit less attentive than Nottingham or S-04 etc

[yashicamat]

Further to what Garth said, if you're mashing from grain, keep the mash temp higher (up at 68 degrees or so) to yield a sweeter wort. Short of something a bit closer to a TC, I can't think of anything to base a "normal" beer around though that would give a fruit beer end product.

[JammyBStard]

Further to what Garth said, if you're mashing from grain, keep the mash temp higher (up at 68 degrees or so) to yield a sweeter wort. Short of something a bit closer to a TC, I can't think of anything to base a "normal" beer around though that would give a fruit beer end product.

Well I was going to (on a very small scale) take a simple Pale recipe try to substitute some malt content for some raspberry Syrup and reduce the hops drastically and see what happens. But for the future I've read aboud making a wheat beer, allowing it to go through the primary stage then move in to a secondry fv on top of fruit Puree.

[tomU]

Pale malt alone will produce a fairly dry beer - the more crystal or (or carapils if you want to keep it pale) you add, the sweeter your beer will be. If you add anything fruit based, add it in the secondary - don't boil or you'll lose too much fruit flavour & aroma.

[JammyBStard]

nice one; cheers

[Barley Water]

I am not really into fruit beers but I can tell you that if you add rasberry syrup to a low gravity beer, as you correctly stated, it will jack up the alchol content. Of course, since the sugar in the syrup is converted to alcholol and CO2, it will seriously dry the beer out as well. Unless you want to try and pasturize the beer after adding the syrup, you either must keep the kegs or bottles cold enough to retard the yeast (a somewhat dangerous approach) or somehow chemically kill it off (maybe something from the world of winemaking would work here).

My suggestion would be to make a heffeweizen (with the appropriate German heffe yeast) and add some of the fruit concentrate liquids which are not fermentable (you should be able to get something that will work from you local homebrew store or off the internet). If you carbonate the brew to a pretty high level, it will bring our the aroma of the fruit flavoring you choose plus your significant other can enjoy drinking the concoction out of a traditional heffe glass (you know it's all about presentation with women). As it turns out, brewing with fruit can be somewhat tricky and expensive since using ripe fruit requires quite a bit of fruit and the end result can be somewhat of a crapshoot.

[JammyBStard]

I am not really into fruit beers

Me neither!