Help, I've been set a brewing challenge!

[Llamapup]

Hello All

While drinking some of my most recent homebrew (St Peter's Golden Ale) with some friends this weekend we decided to set ourselves a brewing challenge. I was wondering if anyone here had any suggestions.

We plan to drink the fruits of our labour and "judge" our efforts some time in September, so hopefully that gives me enough time to brew and condition something nice.

We agreed it should be judged on the following criteria: Taste, unique or interesting ingredients, and (somewhat embarasingly) ABV.

I suppose I could add some additiional ingredients to some sort of beer or wine kit, but it would be better if I made something from scratch.

Wine, beer, cider etc are all an option, but I only have basic brewing equipment so beer from grain may well need to be ruled out. I've got a two 40 ltr plastic FVs and four gallon demijohns. So I could brew either a small or large batch.

I quite like the idea of brewing something from fruit. Raspberrys, Damsons etc. Although I suppose I am limited by what is in season if I want to use fresh fruit.

I'm looking for some inspiration. Does anyone have any exciting or unusual reccomendations?

Thanks

Llamapup

 

[oldbloke]

A gallon or two of strawberry wine in those demis might be good enough in that timeframe, and frozen strawbs work well.

 

[Ken L]

Why not do a selection ?
Barley wine with extra sugar and a HAT wine yeast can be got upto 17 or 18% and still carbonate.
Juice wines are always good.
There are lots of fruit wines that you can try but not much in season before then. Date wine is interesting though and has a really malty flavour that will have them confused about whether it's a wine or a beer. Mine cleared and carbonated beautifully.

 

[pittsy]

extract beer brewing , easy to do only a large pan needed or a couple of pans (on the hob) some dried malt extract and maybe some grain to add flavour (soak in a pan for 30 mins ) and a good yeast (liquid) this will be a winner :thumb: btw viewtopic.php?f=30&t=2672

 

[Llamapup]

Thanks all

Those are good suggestions. I'm considering the idea of a fruit wine. Raspberrys and strawberrys will both be in season this summer to enable me to make the brew.

The problem is that I have never actually drank any fruit wine, so I have no idea what to expect. I'm also not so keen on sweet wine. I'm learning how to controll the sweetness of wine with wine kits and presume I can apply this to fruit wine, but do fruit wines even taste alright if they are semi-dry?

Can you make a fizzy fruit wine?

Thanks

Llamapup

 

[oldbloke]

I don't think you have time to wait for fresh strawbs/rassies, the wine will need at least a little bit of aging. Start now with frozen. Fizzy wine needs strong bottles, don't bother. Rassies on their own can turn out more "interesting" than "nice" but strawbs are good and strawb+rass should work. They can all be made dry, just don't put too much sugar in. My strawb wine is dry and lovely.

 

[Llamapup]

I don't think you have time to wait for fresh strawbs/rassies, the wine will need at least a little bit of aging. Start now with frozen. Fizzy wine needs strong bottles, don't bother. Rassies on their own can turn out more "interesting" than "nice" but strawbs are good and strawb+rass should work. They can all be made dry, just don't put too much sugar in. My strawb wine is dry and lovely.

Thanks for that. There is a "pick your own" strawberry farm on the way to work, but judging the way that the fruit is ripening in my tiny garden I cant imagine any farmed strawberrys will be ready any time soon.

I would sort of prefer raspberrys because they just seem a bit more tart and a bit less florral than strawberrys. Would frozen raspberrys not work on their own?

I really don't know what fruit wine would even taste like.....How much time should I expect to need fruit wine of this sort to condition in the bottle?

You say I need i need strong bottles for fizzy wine. I have some .75 litre brown swing top bottles. They seem to handle the fizz from my beer okay. Is there a lot more fizz in fizzy wine? I think I need to understand the physics of these things a bit better....

Thanks

Llamapup

 

[oldbloke]

Oh, if you put it in beer bottles, might be OK. Bottles made for still wine can't handle fizzy wine safely. Plus you have the in-bottle conditioning that leads to yeast deposits that get stirred up when you pour - a wine bottle isn't typically emptied in one go. But if you use beer bottles...

I quite like the rassy wine I made but rassy can come out tasting a bit like a vaguely medicinal bubblegum. They're better when mixed with something else, in general.
You might have a look at some of the recipes that use canned fruit.
For dry wine, I'd say not more than 2.5lb total sugars to a gallon - some older recipes quote more but it can get a bit syruppy.

What do fruit wines taste of? Wine, mainly. Seriously! It's often hard to even guess what fruit was used.