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Thursday, October 13, 2011

Pomegranate Wheat Beer was somewhat successful

In August, I brewed up a batch of wheat beer.  It seemed to go well.  I had gone to the  Brewmaster's Warehouse and asked for a pretty basic wheat recipe. He suggested one called American Golden Wheat, and that seemed to do the trick. I came home with 3 pounds of wheat extract, 2 pounds of Briess white wheat grains and 2 pounds of Briess 2 Row Brewers Malt. the white wheat and brewers malt would be put in a bag and placed in the hot water to steep in a process called mashing. As you can see from the photographic evidence, I was very studious about this process.  I also had couple different types of hops for added flavor and aroma.  I used Cascade and Centennial. But then, once the boiling was done I added my own variation on this wheat beer.  I added 1.5 quarts of pomegranate juice.  The resulting wort was a lovely peachy color blending the pink of the juice and the gold of the wheat beer concoction.  It looked like this...

Then, well, I got distracted. Once the yeast was pitched and the carboy was stored in a cool place, I got kind of busy doing other things.  I should have bottled this beer early September, but I didn't. Lots of people gave me advice - and as you might expect, all of it was different. Some people said I had probably already ruined the beer and it should have been bottled directly on schedule. Other people said you can't ruin the beer by letting it sit too long and it'll be fine.  I just wasn't sure what to expect.  When we finally had time to bottle, I decided that because of the uncertainty, I wanted to bottle it in one liter grolsch bottles. Mostly because I hate bottling, but also because if it was bad I didn't want to have wasted an entire day filling 12 ounce bottles.

Well, yesterday we were ready to taste the pomegranate beer experiment. And you know what...? It was delicious. There was only one major flaw in the brewing. I had put too much water in the carboy resulting in less alcohol content. I know what I did and I won't do it again, but for now we have a tasty light beer to enjoy.  The beer is crisp and clean and the pomegranate isn't excessive but gives it just a nice tartness.  It was thoroughly enjoyable.  I am actually looking forward to sharing it with friends. 

3 comments:

  1. I don't like to leave anything in the primary fermenter for longer than 10 days, but I think as long as you do a good job sanitizing and the the templates are below 82 it's fine (as you can see).

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  2. I'd love to see a detailed recipe for this.

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    1. I'm sure I can dig through my notes and see what I can come up with for you. I'll post it soon!

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