Hey folks, A few times a year I go through my scrap bucket. It contains partials of grains, DME, ingredients etc. I had intended to put together a partial mash amber ale, like a fat tire clone with what I have. So, the wife wants me to cook up some dinner being down with a cold. I open a cabinet and I find 2 -1lb boxes of raisins she had from holiday baking. She asked can you put them in beer and use them up? Personally I'm a plain Jane vanilla Guy, and don't tinker with fruits in my beers. Can anyone give any feedback if using raisins is even viable? I see dogfish has a brew out that used raisins in it. Going to brew a partial with some extract: Golden DME Special-B Munich-10 Caramel-120 Saaz WL# 550 Thanks! Ed
I made a syrup out of raisins and black currants. Chopped 'em and simmered them until there was a syrup consistency. I separated liquids from solids and just added the syrup to a dubbel in lieu of a dark candi syrup. Not bad, worth trying again, but my best dubbels have used the dark candi syrups. You've got the right ingredients to make something similar.
909, Thanks for the info. I use quite a bit of Belgian candi in my brews, the syrup sounds like a good alternative! I will look into how fermentable the raisins are and work it out in a recipe instead of candi. Also, both know Belgian candi is expensive for what it is. I have found if you can find a Amish/Dutch market they sell some nice candi made of beets really cheap! It works well if you are doing something blonde as it is clear. I get like a 3lb bag for $7.00. It may not be authentic Belgian, but I can't tell the difference.
I probably haven't brewed enough with commercial candi syrups to say they make a difference (but most people seem to think they do). I just know that the best Belgian dubbel I made used the D-180. I have tried a few different homemade syrups, too. It's fun to try. ryane's blog discusses the approach I used most recently (it's been a while since I tried). The best beer I brewed with a homemade sugar syrup was a British pale ale with an amber syrup, IMO.
Funny, you mention this. I use to make some homemade clones like amaretto macerating apricots etc. I used to make a lot of caramel syrups from scratch. This would give the liquor its color and caramel notes. The caramel syrup is cooked and entirely different then simple syrups used in mixed drinks. I may try a batch of brew using a home brew syrup, great idea!
I made a raisin beer with the Trappist high gravity yeast and hefty malt bill to go along with it last summer. I used about the same amount of raisins (2lbs) for a 5 gallon batch along with about 20 lbs of malt, and I did get a decent level of flavor from the fruit in the final product. I don't know how cooking the raisins down to a syrup will change things, as I added them at flameout and racked off of them when I bottled. I made up the recipe spontaneously when I heard that Dogfish Head was going to re-brew their Raison D'Extra for the first time in years, and I wanted to try a strong ale of my own making to compare with it. Also, somebody gave me the raisins after some sort of scouting event that evidently involved making a ton of trail mix. I couldn't turn down 2 lbs of free raisins, given I was already thinking about it.
Dogfish puts the raisins in the boil. Their recipe is here: http://ec1.images-amazon.com/media/i3d/01/A/wia_migrate/dogfish_0505.pdf
If you're wanting to brew a bigger beer, Big Momma's Barleywine uses golden raisins in the boil. It's actually another Dogfish recipe, off the book Xtreme Brewing. I've got the book, but couldn't find any on-line information for the recipe other than brewtoad. https://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/big-mamas-barleywine
Be careful with that recipe for two reasons. One is that the Big Momma recipe at Brewtoad implies that one pound of raisins are added to the regular 60-minute boil. According to the book "Extreme Brewing", this is not the case. The raisins are added to a separate pot which contains 12 ounces of boiled water. Whole-leaf Cascade hops (loose) are added to this water to hydrate and left for about an hour. This is stirred occasionally while it cools. Five minutes before the end of the main boil, the mixture in the separate pot is pureed to a thin paste in consistency. It is then added to the brewpot and stirred for the last minute. There also seems to be a misprint in the book. On the table of Ingredients, it lists "1 pound (330 g) golden raisins. Yet, under the "Process" it days to "add 1/2 pound golden raisins". Nothing is mentioned about the other missing 1/2 pound. Elsewhere in the book (Page 70) it says that when adding raisins to 5 gallons of wort, that you should add 6 ounces. Therefore the 1/2 pound of raisins seems to be the correct amount for the Big Momma recipe, not 1 pound as shown in the Brewtoad recipe and in the list of ingredients. Another confirmation of sorts can be found on page 148, which lists the recipe for "Raison D'Etre" the less alcohol version of the best beer I've ever had: Raison D'Extra, and which I hope to brew this year. Under "Ingredients" it liists "6 ounces of pureed raisins". The "Big Mama recipe aims for a higher starting gravity than the Raisn D'Etre, so therefore 8 ounces of raisns rather than 6. So, relatively, I think a full pound might be too much for the Big Momma recipe and therefore a misprint in the book. I thought i should point this pout as it could make a big difference in the final results.
Just another point about my last message. The ingredients say "1 pound" of raisins and converts that to "330 g. Well, 330 grams is 0.7 lb. So the very same recipe has three different amounts for the raisins: 1.0 pound, 0.7 pound, and 0.5 pound. Obviously at least two misprints. If I was writing a book, I would also ensure that my Editors were well supplied with beer, happy and quite drunk
