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.

I’ve made WineExpert white wine kits before. They have never been fantastic but they weren’t bad either. It’s pretty fun to have a keg of sparkling wine! I think the concentrated juice should be of good enough quality to make a tasty hybrid beer.

I’m also trying out a new yeast, ECY 46 “Farmhouse 2” which is described as

An eccentric American farmhouse isolate producing a pleasant tartness upon fermentation (pH 4.0 - 4.1). Expect high attenuation, fruity esters and tartness with this Homebrewer’s Exclusive release. Suggested fermentation temperature: 76-82⁰F. Apparent Attenuation: 80-84%.

There’s very little about this yeast on the internet, but it sounds fun! I’m looking forward to seeing how it does in this application. High ester production and a mild tartness sounds great for this recipe.

A note from the future: This beer didn’t turn out well. I wouldn’t recommend following this recipe as is. Read on for details.

Recipe

In order to keep the OG reasonable, I’m going to make this batch a bit over-sized. Blending the wine into 7 gallons should increase the gravity about 13 points if I did the math right. I’m building the grain bill for a target of 1.044. That’ll give a total OG around 1.057 with about 23% of the sugar coming from the wine and 77% from the malt.

I’ll keg 5 gallons to drink fresh. The rest will be split between two one gallon jugs. I’ll add different bottle dregs to each and let them age over the the winter.

To keep a little body in a beer with so much simple sugar from the grape juice I’ll use a significant amount of rye and flaked wheat, and I’ll also mash higher than I normally would with a saison/farmhouse ale: 156°F.

Despite what BeerSmith says, flameout hops definitely add some bitterness. I don’t chill instantaneously. I’d guess maybe another 3-5 IBU from the flameout addition? Let’s say the beer will be 10-12 IBU total.

Batch size:      7 gallons
Target OG:       1.044 (1.057 with wine added)
Target FG:       1.010-ish
Target ABV:      6.3%
Caluclated IBU:  7
Calculated SRM:  3.9

Grain bill:
7lb US 2-Row       (70%)
2lb Rye Malt       (20%)
1lb Flaked Wheat   (10%)

Mash (Batch Sparge): 156°F @ 1.5 qts/lb

Hops:
0.2 oz  Columbus          @ 30 mintutes (7 IBU)
1.25 oz Hallertau Blanc   @ flameout
1.25 oz Nelson Sauvin     @ flameout

Yeast:
ECY 46 "Farmhouse 2"

Notes

2020-10-31 - Halloween brew day. Spooky. Sparge stuck repeatedly even with rice hulls. Mash tun haunted?

Pre-boil gravity was a little above estimates and eyeballing the kettle I thought I had about the right volume, so I cut the boil short to just 30 minutes instead of 60. Basically just moved my 60 min hops to 30 min, and nothing else changed.

OG 1.045. About 6.75 gallons. A bit of math gives an estimated true OG of ~1.058 with the wine added. Can’t actually measure this since I’ll be adding the wine part way into primary fermentation. I don’t have to answer to the TTB though. Ballpark is close enough.

I pitched the yeast, and split the wort between a 7 gallon wine bucket, and a 1 gallon glass jug.

Fermented in water bath at 77 °F. Vigorous airlock activity ~3 hours after pitching. Wow, that’s a record I think. I didn’t even make a starter for this.

2020-11-01 - Water bath is actually 79 °F this morning. Turning it down just a bit. It’s probably fine.

2020-11-02 - Fermentation is already slowing down noticeably. This is a fast yeast. Added the wine base to the large fermenter. Will blend the 1 gallon jug in at packaging time.

2020-11-11 - Kegging time. I split off two one gallon jugs to add oak and dregs to. Kegged the rest, roughly five gallons. FG 1.008. This beer is WINEY. The gravity sample tasted a bit rough around the edges, but promising.

Added 1.0 oz oak cubes loose in the keg. 0.2 oz oak in each of the gallon jugs. Boiled the oak for five minutes before adding.

I saved the yeast from the one gallon overflow fermenter that didn’t have wine added to it. No immediate plans to use it, but who knows when I’ll have another chance to buy ECY46.

As for the gallon jugs: One got dregs from Sapwood “Growing Season: Cherry” which was quite sour, the other got Bootleg Funk Weapon 2 which should be fruity and funky but not sour. I’m pretty excited to see how both of these turn out.

I’m going to let the keg condition warm a little while. I’ll put it on to chill/carbonate in 5-10 days.

2020-11-18 - Put the keg in to carbonate.

2020-11-24 - Oh my, what have I done? This is an odd one. It almost smells like… boiled chicken? 10 years of brewing and I’ve never said that about a beer before.

I’m not really sure what happened.

2020-12-08 - Gave it some more conditioning time but it hasn’t changed. It’s hard to identify what’s going on, but whatever it is, it’s not good. I’m going to let it sit warm a few months and see what it does. Might be a dumper. Shame.

2021-01-24 - The keg of the clean beer is still tasting pretty weird. Between the base beer and the two gallons jugs with dregs, the gallon jug with sour bottle dregs tasted best. The brett dregs version was better than the clean beer too, but it was less of an improvement.

I transferred the ~4 gallons left in the keg, and the 1 gallon + sour dregs into a 5 gallon carboy. I’ll forget about it for a while and maybe this time next year it’ll be something tasty.

2022-05-21 - Pulled a sample to decide whether to package or dump this, and it’s tasting pretty good actually! I racked it to a keg while I decide what to do with it.

2022-06-25 - I decided to fill 16 bottles and serve the rest from the keg. Primed the bottles individually with 2.4g of sucrose for about 2.6 vol CO2. Put the rest in the kegerator.

Changes for next time

I think I played with too many variables at once here. Untested wine blending technique + new yeast – hard to say which part made it taste so weird.

Wine influenced saisons are still a favorite style of mine so I’m going to keep working on this. Next time I make one I’m going to make sure I have a good finished base saison, and then I’ll add grapes or juice in secondary. I can start light and add more until I get the wine flavor where I want it. I’ll try to source some better quality wine base too. Maybe I’ll finally spring for some frozen grapes.

I’m curious to see how the one gallon test batches with dregs turn out. I’ll report back on those when they’re done.

I’ll have to make at least a small test batch with the ECY46 I saved. I’m curious what it tastes like in a normal recipe.