As a homebrewer who is COMPLETELY ignorant to the terminology of a vintner I think must is the correct word... but let me explain myself. I have a simple saison sitting on oak that was soaked in sauvignon blanc, I plan on hopping it wit, you guessed it, nelson sauvin hops. But this led me to question why I didn't also include some sauvignon blanc grape must (juice, right?). Has anyone had any luck bridging this gap with their beers, and when did you add the must? At this point I am in secondary, and while I could probably add some now, I would rather have added to primary. Who knows, maybe @jbakajust1 is just gonna give this one the axe. But i need to try to get some info.
Ive done quite a few beers that included some grapes/must/wine in them, including one just this past summer that included riesling juice in the primary (split 10gal batch, half with lochristi brett, half with wine yeast, both to get a dose of woodruff for this upcoming spring) When I brew a beer that includes grape juice I like to use a wine yeast to ferment so that there is a nice round sweetness to balance the acidity of the grapes (wine yeast doesnt ferment maltotriose) and try to keep out high L caramel malts, relying on mostly a pils base when using white grapes, and allowing some colored malts (munich, etc) in when using red grapes here are a couple different recipes where Ive used grapes, wine, juice, etc in the recipe Using concentrated wine Using grapes Using white juice Using red juice
No experience with must but I have straight up added a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc to 5 gal of Citra/Mosaic dry hopped saison one time and it was fantastic. I imagine that would work even better with Nelson.
No axe, you're asking about making beer with grape as a fruit addition, not asking about making wine. I've tried it once, but I did it in a bucket, added grains to the wort to sour it, and then left everything for a few months (my very early days of doing sours). Ended up dumping it.
Here are some obligatory @OldSock links (note that in some cases, a recipe was split several ways, and so he only mentions the wine- or grape-infused portion in passing in the recipe page, but the "results" should be specific to the wine/grape version): New Zealand saison with NZ wine (and results) (@OldSock observes: "The quality of wine you can procure is usually better than the wine grapes you can source locally, and if nothing else combining them is a much simpler task. Mixing wine into a batch of commercial beer isn’t allowed (which is why breweries tend to turn to wine barrels and grapes); you have to appreciate the legal freedom homebrewing allows!") Alsatian saison with Alsation wine (and results) Funky dark saison racked onto cabernet sauvignon grapes (and results) Lambic racked onto cabernet sauvignon grapes (and results) Barrel-aged sour on cabernet sauvignon grapes (and results) I know that's a lot of reading material, but I think if you read through those you'll find a lot of valuable ideas and observations. The short version is that there is a lot of room for interesting and delicious results, but as @anteater suggested you should consider simply adding wine rather than unfermented juice.
The hardest part is sourcing the grapes, especially out of season. There are frozen juice musts that are available that are supposedly pretty good...but it's a pretty penny. If you are serious about using grapes, it's best to time it around harvest.
At least a year ago, I added Alexander's concentrated Zinfidel juice to a sour that still sits in the fermenter. I've pulled samples and it is quite bad! If I stomach up the courage, this likely will be a 2017 drainpour
I just had my first beer/wine hybrid the other day - a Belgian strong pale with grape must by Mikkeller called Winale. It was really, really good. I almost did a 2/3 saison, 1/3 apple juice blend last fall but got lazy and just did a cider. I think you'd be fine adding it to primary or secondary, as long as it all ferments out before packaging, obviously. Secondary would probably give you more wine flavors, but I could be wrong. If you end up adding any to the saison keep us posted! I'd love to try something like this soon
