Today’s brew is going to be a pale beer/wine hybrid.

In the past, my approach for combining wine and beer has been to blend finished commercial wine into my beers at a rate between one cup, and a whole bottle in five gallons of beer. Results have been good, but a bit on the subtle side. Today I want to try to make something more wine forward – a real beer/wine hybrid instead of just a beer with a little bit of wine in it.

Whole grapes would be great for this, but that’s a large and expensive purchase. I’m going to need some planning and confidence when I do finally buy a 5 gallon pail of frozen grapes.

Instead of whole grapes, for this batch I’m going to add the undiluted contents of a one gallon (~5 bottles) wine kit a few days into primary.

Vitus Vinifera is the scientific name for the species that contains most varieties of wine grapes.

This “Saison Vinifera” will blend funky tart saison, oak, and wine.

A large portion of my homebrewing over the last six months has been focused on trying to emulate the great mixed fermentation beers coming out of my favorite local brewery, Sapwood Cellars. Two of those beers were delicious tart saisons that they released in fall 2019:

No Beginnings was a pale saison with Brettanomyces, aged in Sauvignon Blanc wine barrels.

I’d be willing to bet that First Blush started life as a similar base beer to No Beginnings, but it was fermented with chardonnay pomace, and finished on whole Cabernet Franc grapes. It is rosé in appearance and the flavor has a unique light, tart fruitiness.

My plan is to brew a batch of funky pale saison, split it half in secondary, and see how close to each of these I can get

Double sour brew day!

I’m still very new to sour beer brewing. Rather than going off and experimenting right away, I want to start with some proven recipes. Today I’m starting a couple of beers inspired by my favorite sours to come out of Sapwood Cellars to date.

First up, Opulence, a sour red that has two separate cherry additions. Aged in a mix of red wine and bourbon barrels, dry sour cherries were added early in the aging process, and then before bottling it was finished on fresh sour cherries.

Before trying it I was a little skeptical of combination of bourbon bourbon aging a sour beer, but the vanilla character of the barrels worked really nicely with the cherries.