An important part of WIB since its inception has been our homebrewing community. We never cease to be amazed by the creativity, talent and sometimes utterly bizarre creations they come up with, using the ingredients from our shelves. We've often said we wish we could share the brews that make it to our monthly homebrew club with the rest of the world, so now we are!
The challenge for June was Jubilee/ royalty due to the Jubilee weekend - the club ignored the challenge (assumingly not wanting to celebrate the Queen in any way and just brought whatever they wanted, which made us very proud. The best two beers of the day were a couple of brilliant sours.
Caleb brought his Strawberry & Cucumber Sour - based on Brick Brewery’s summer favourite. This beer came second in the Sour and Funky category at the latest LAB competition. You can read Caleb’s brewer interview here.
Makes 27L
Estimated OG 1.049
Estimated ABV 4.62%
Estimated IBU ~15
Grain Bill:
3kg Pale Wheat Malt
0.75kg Extra Pale Maris Otter
0.5kg Golden Promise
0.3kg Flaked Wheat
0.25kg Acidulated Malt
17L of strike water @73C
Mash @66C for 45mins
Sparge out to 27L
Boil for 10mins (do not add any hops!)
Cool to 40C
Pitch 3g of Lallemand's WildBrew Helveticus Pitch
Wait for ~24-36 hours or until wort taste sour to your liking
Boil for 50mins
15g Magnum (~17AA) for last 15mins
Protofloc at 5mins
Cool to 38C
Pitch Voss Keik
Ferment at 38C until gravity stabilizes
You should have 23-24L of sour beer at this point
Secondary additions:
~2.3kg of fresh strawberry (100g/L)
Strawberry prep:
- pluck the green bit off the top
- rinse well with tap water
- blend into a puree with a very well sanitized blender
When I first started doing this, I used to dunk the strawberries in no rinse sanitiser for a few seconds and then rinse with water. After reading the internet too much I got convinced it was either pointless or possibly bad so I started skipping this step and haven't had any problems since. Also, I've used frozen strawberries before and it's not quite as good but still delicious and can save a lot of money when strawberries aren't in season.
~2.3kg of cucumber (100g/L)
Cucumber prep:
- peel skin off
- rinse well with tap water
- blend into a puree with a very well sanitized blender
Toss all the puree in (~4L worth) and continue to ferment at 38C
Protip: toss the puree into a mesh bag to avoid any fruit pulp from getting into bottles later. Even a slight bit of pulp in the bottles will probably result in a bottle bomb.
Give it a few days after the airlock stops bubbling and then cold crash and bottle/keg as you usually would.
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Martin is one of our more experimental brewers (the Christmas ham beer is a thing of legend. And disgust. Mostly disgust.) and it was quite difficult getting a recipe off him as his brew days are quite ad hoc, but he did manage to cobble something together for his great Passion Fruit & Pomegranate Sour.
Approx 1 gallon final volume
Full volume (7l) brew in a bag mash at 65C
Malt Weight (kg) %
Propino 0.425 40.5
Wheat Malt 0.335 31.9
Pale Crystal 0.19 18.1
Flaked Oats 0.1 9.5
60 minute boil
Hop Alpha% Time Utilisation Weight (g) IBU
Hallertauer Mittelfrueh 4 30 0.2 5 8.8
Hallertauer Mittelfrueh 4 50 0.1 5 4.4
Predicted OG 1070
Actual OG 1050
FV 1020
AVB 3.9%
Passion fruit and pomegranate pulp, from frozen fruit approx. 50g maybe.
Mixed with pinch of some pectolase for approx 1hr just because, and added 5 minutes to end of boil.
Fermented with WildBrew Philly Sour (what was left in the packet 2g maybe) fermentation was a bit sluggish. Took about 2 weeks but never showed much activity.
Batch primed with 30g of brown sugar.
Notes: Added crystal to this recipe which I hadn't before and don't think it worked that well. I had invented to add a mango to boost the fruit but it was beyond ripe and wasn't used leaving the fruit side lacking a bit.
waterintobeer Homebrew Club is on the first Sunday of every month, from 2pm. All welcome!