Brew Day: Pomegranate Cream Ale

I made a Watermelon Wheat Ale and that’s about the only fruit beer I’ve made.

So when I sat down with my last kilo of Pilsner malt before restocking, I had various ideas for a simple yet flavorful beer. I was thinking along the lines of a previously brewed Cream Ale and add a bit of fruit puree or fruit juice in the secondary. For a fruit beer a lightly hopped wheat beer seems to be the best base beer, but my plan was to re-brew a slightly different version of my Cream Ale and I will let you know if this forms a good base. My understanding is that it will, but I will wait till I taste the beer and confirm my findings.

The decision about which fruit to use for this beer was simple: the in-season pomegranate. It’s a bit tart and sometimes if they’re not ripe, they can be sour too and choosing the right pomegranates can make all the difference.

There was a bit of an apprehension about how long I should keep the beer in secondary. I had a bit of an issue with the Water Wheat Ale in that the watermelon puree was in the secondary for about 3 days but ended up with a very pronounced vegetal flavor. But if I went with one day in secondary, I fear I may have a high amount of unfermented fruit sugars that can over-carbonate the beers and even give me a few bottle bombs. This brewwiki link said pomegranates are very subtle tasting, and its best to use pomegranate juice sold in stores. That wasn’t much nor was there enough to answer the million questions I had and there wasn’t enough information anywhere else that I could rely on. So I decided to go it alone: add about a litre of fresh pomegranate juice for 2 days and see how things turned out.

Based on this experiment from the folks at brulosophy.com, I targeted a mash temperature of 63°C to extract as much fermentables as possible. I got my hands on a new hop, Horizon, with about 12.3% AA and clean bittering properties and that was chosen for the single hop addition. Before adding the hops to the boil, I smelled it and it had spicy, pungent notes to and I think it will be interesting to see how this hop works with something as simple as a Cream Ale.

From the recipe, it’s a low gravity, really pale yellow beer. But the pomegranate juice with its sugars will raise the alcohol levels slightly and turn the beer to a slightly orange shade from the pale yellow.

Pomegranate Cream Ale (Tasting notes here)

Specifics

Batch size (litres): 8 litres
Type: All Grain, Fruit Beer

IBU: 25

SRM: 2.4, although this will change to a slight orange with the addition of pomegranate juice

OG: 1.036

Grains and Sugars

1.2 kg Pilsner

300 grams Flaked Rice

Hops

6 grams Horizon @ 45

Other Additions

Add 1 litre of fresh pomegranate juice to the beer in secondary for 2 days after a week of fermentation.

Yeast

Fermentis S-04 Ale Yeast

Schedules

Mash at 63°C for 60 minutes.

Batch sparged at 80°C.

Boiled for 45 minutes.

Brew Day: Simcoe SMaSH IPA

Honestly, its good to get back to brewing. No, it really feels good to sit down and review a recipe, go through my hops and malts and to check on my yeast starter from time to time. But I wish I did a better job of reviewing my recipes.

This beer was intended to be a riff of my Citra SMaSH Dark Ale with a few minute differences.

Truth be told, this beer was the result of a simple screw up. The original intent was to make a clone of the Citra SMaSH Dark Ale as is. No changes, none whatsoever. But the hop additions went wrong. I loaded the calculator at brewersfriend.com, entered the details and when it came to the hop additions, I added 15 grams of Simcoe (12.7% AA) to be boiled for 30 minutes to get about 24 IBUs which sounded fair enough, although it was slightly higher than the IBUs of the Citra SMaSH. So I was finally set.

It was only after I added the hops to the wort that I sat down to review my recipe and saw that when I converted from US to Metric units on the calculator, I forgot to change the batch size. The default batch size in the calculator is 5 gallons US, which when converted to Metric is 20.8 liters. And 15 grams of Simcoe will add 24 IBUs for 20.8 liters of beer over a 30 minute boil. Only, I wasn’t making 20.8 liters, it’s a much smaller 8 liter batch. I realized my mistake and changed the batch size to 8 liters to see that the calculated IBUs now stood at 62.

And that’s that. Every brewer has a story to tell about their beers and this is mine. So now I’ve got a beer that has IPA level bitterness but is also a SMaSH because there’s just one malt and just one hop and Simcoe will be used again to dry hop. So this is a Simcoe SMaSH IPA. I hope it can be called that but I'm afraid it would never completely fit the description of either an IPA or a SMaSH.

Simcoe SMaSH IPA (Tasting notes here)

Specifics

Batch size (litres): 8 litres
Type: Extract

IBU: 62

SRM: 25

OG: 1.060

Grains and Sugars
1.3 kg Dry Malt Extract
 - 600 grams added at the start of boil
 - 700 grams at flame out

Hops
15 grams Simcoe @ 30 min
10 grams Simcoe dry hopped for 5 days

Yeast

Fermentis S-04 Ale Yeast

Schedules
Boiled for 30 minutes.

Losing Beer and Getting Back

Its been quite a while since I posted anything here. This is a small post about what’s been happening so far.

I brewed two small batches of beer on a Friday and then I had to be hospitalized for 4 days about a week after I brewed. I couldn't get back to the beers quickly enough and when I finally did, I looked at spoilt beer in the fermenters, both of which I had to throw away with a heavy heart.

I’m in the pink of health now and I’m currently writing a few recipes to get back to brewing. These beers are simple, calculatedly flavoursome and easy drinking beers. Winter is approaching and usually this calls for some high gravity, body warming beers, but I’d like to get back to brewing with a few simple beers and then move onto the more complex ones.

I will start posting recipes shortly, so thank you for sticking around.