Have you ever mixed beer and wine?

Discussion in 'Homebrewing' started by clearbrew, Apr 19, 2012.

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  1. clearbrew

    clearbrew Initiate (0) Nov 3, 2009 Louisiana

    I have a pomegranate tree that, for the first time, looks like it will produce a lot of fruit. I would like to do a batch of pomegranate beer with them. But I was thinking about fermenting a gal or so of, fairly sweet, pomegranate wine then adding it to a batch of homebrew in the keg.
    I've never heard of anyone doing this but I thought it might be interesting. Thoughts?
     
    #1 clearbrew, Apr 19, 2012
  2. ryane

    ryane Initiate (0) Nov 21, 2007 Washington

    Sounds interesting, but I gotta ask, why not just ferment it all as beer to begin with?

    I mean to make a sweet wine your gonna have to either have too much sugar for the yeast to eat (which means very high abv) or your gonna have to backsweeten and hit it with sorbate. Both things that wont work well with a beer (especially if you bottle). You could do a very sweet beer to balance the acidity of the pom to begin with and not have to deal with the affects of tons of simple sugars from the sweet wine

    I have used finished wine in beers before and the character is fleeting at best. Ive added 2 bottles of cab to 5gal of a brett beer, and while young it had a nice dark berry flavor, but unfortunately it faded substantially with age
     
    #2 ryane, Apr 19, 2012
  3. mikehartigan

    mikehartigan Maven (1,421) Apr 9, 2007 Illinois

    Since the yeast is going to consume all of the fermentable sugars anyway, what do you hope to gain by fermenting them separately? Indeed, if the wine yeast quits due to the high alcohol content of the wine (I'm not a wine expert - how do you make sweet wine?), then it will start fermenting again as soon as you add it to the beer. I say just add the pom to the fermenter.
     
    #3 mikehartigan, Apr 19, 2012
  4. ryane

    ryane Initiate (0) Nov 21, 2007 Washington

    Thats one way to make a sweet wine, and how to make a sack mead (too many fermentables, yeast dies/goes dormant due to alcohol), but like you said once added to beer it will just referment, so in essence your just adding sugar and fruit to a beer.

    The only benefit I could see to going this route would be the esters from the wine yeast, however you could simply start the fermentation of the beer with wine yeast (something I love playing with by itself in beer) and finish with an ale strain (wine yeast doesnt ferment maltotriose) Fermenting a beer with wine yeast is an easy way to get a sweet finished product because it doesnt ferment the maltotriose, and adding sugar in that case helps to thin the otherwise very heavy body
     
    #4 ryane, Apr 19, 2012
  5. clearbrew

    clearbrew Initiate (0) Nov 3, 2009 Louisiana

    Well, the only successful experience I have with wine making is a batch of mead. It was a sweat mead, and it finished sweet because there where to many fermentables for the yeast to handle. So my plan was to choose a wine yeast that would finish sweet then add it to a finished beer that was cooled and carbed. I fiqured that once the beer was cooled and the yeast had fallen out, I wouldn't really have to worry about it fermenting the wine any further. Also, as I understand it, most ale yeasts have a significantly lower alcohol tolerance than most wine yeast. So if I where to add wine to beer, shouldn't I just have to bring the alcohol level up to a certain point to kill the beer yeast?
    Forgive me if I'm way off base here. I haven't done any research yet, I'm just spit balling. I have many months before the pomegranates are even ripe.
     
    #5 clearbrew, Apr 20, 2012
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