Fruit additions to beer

It doesn't matter unless you intend to soak the fruit longer than a month which is often unnecessary. The full batch of yeast rips through fruit quickly.

 

The best way to add fruit to your IPA would be to add fruit juice or, better yet, concentrate to your beer at high krausen. If you're looking for a citrus contribution, you could use zest with the same technique that you dry hop or you could use citrus oil, which is MUCH easier.

 

When I say sour IPA's I generally mean hoppy sours, but if you want a true IPA sour, look for Green Monster (super limited) from Deschutes (amazing), which was there IPA that accidentally soured on them, so they rolled with it.

Other than that, ones that are readily available near me are a ton of selections from Trinity Brewing in CO. They do a bunch with IPA souring.

Also, Crooked Stave does a fair selection of hoppy sours. If you don't get Crooked Stave or Trinity near you, maybe we can do a trade so you can try some of these because I sense your skepticism!

 

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/18120/92078/
http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/25191/111020/
http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/192/26541/
http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/18120/128642/

 

I've had sours with hop presence that were good (something from New Belgium), but not IPA levels of bitterness. We may be dancing around the same thing here, because my position is that sourness and hop bitterness do not play well together. But when hops are added to sours in ways that minimize hop bitterness, good things can come. I would not call these beers IPAs though. Perhaps I shouldn't object if others do, since we have black IPAs, white IPAs, red IPAs, wheat IPAs, weizen IPAs, session IPAs, American IPAs, English IPAs, sour cream and onion IPAs, etc.

 

Last time I'm going to chime in about this stuff for a while, because I don't feel like it's going anywhere. I don't think these beers are IPAs. I know one of the beers claims to have 100 IBUs and another calls itself a DIPA, the reviews have little to say in the way of supporting the firm bitterness that I think of as a hallmark of the style. I've had Le Terroir and thought it was OK, but wouldn't dream of calling it IPA. Our perceptions of style and what we want to call IPA have changed pretty quickly, but I am not convinced that our perceptions of sour/bitter combinations have changed much.

 

While I agree that a hoppy sour is not always a sour ipa, Iin the case of red swingline it is a sour ipa. They use lacto to sour, and continue on with normal ipa style kettle additions and finish fermentation with brett. Phenominal beer, it has the hop bitterness you expect and it works well with the lacto sourness. Im sure they dryhop the hell out of it and use hellatious amounts of late kettle additions as well. If you get a chance check it out.

 

Jack,
I can now say I have tried this beer. I'm not seeing a freshness date on the bottle, but it was the last bottle in a store in n. WI, so it probably wasn't too fresh. I can say that it is interesting but not in a way that I am really loving. The hop bitterness does not seem like 70 ibus. To be honest, the hop presence seemed non-exist to me, initially, dwarfed by a grapefruit rind bitterness. I can find excess citrus rind bitterness to be offputting, and it approaches those levels here. About 2/3 of the way through the bottle, I grew accustomed to the GF elements and could begin to pick out more of the hop elements. There is also a bit of both juice-like sweetness and sourness to this beer that helps to balance the GF bitterness that might otherwise be too much for me. I find the beer an impressive achievement in balancing these elements, and I think cloning it would really be challenging. I'd definitely play with rind and juice combinations. I might consider adding the juice post fermentation, with flash pasteurizing (once it is made readily available to homebrewers!) and force carbonation. Perhaps even some sort of GF essence for consistency in aromatics. Insights into the BP process might help if I sought to clone it. But you know what? I don't particularly love this beer, and would not try to clone it.

As for how balancing tartness and bitterness, it might be just tart enough and just bitter enough to challenge my preconceived notions of sour-bitter clashing. At least, it forces me to consider where the tolerance threshold lies for just how much sour and bitter can co-exist.

 

Peter,

I am sorry to hear that you did not enjoy drinking Grapefruit Sculpin. I am in San Diego right now (attending the NHC) and I really can't tell you how many Grapefruit Sculpin IPAs I have had over the past three days but it has been a lot and I have enjoyed every one of those beers.

Maybe a case of different strokes for different folks?

Cheers!

Jack

 

Yeah, I think that's it. I appreciated it from a brewer's perspective, but less so, from a consumer's perspective, if that makes sense. I will not be buying it again, at least locally. If I have a chance to try it fresh, perhaps.

 

Grapefruit Sculpin tastes like regular Sculpin mixed with Squirt.

 

I never had regular sculpin but have had squirt. In that part of the tasting where I experienced juice like sweetness, yeah, it was sort of like squirt, maybe more like ocean spray ruby red cocktail? But you don't get rind bitterness from hops, squirt, or ruby red, so I'm guessing they add rind or some rind derived tincture (for better control).

 

Belma doesn't really bring any of that to the table unfortunately. Slight tart berry but that's it. It's a solid bittering hop

 

Amorous from wicked weed is great.

 

That is basically my impression of Belma as well. It did make a tasty saison,would not use as a late hop in an APA/IPA.