Today I created my first “fruit” infused ale. Though to be completely honest I did not use any fruit at all. Taking the idea from another recipe I found online I decided to use a fruit tea instead. This minimized the overall difficulty of the brew, lowered the cost and saved me some time.
Ingredients –
- 3.3 lbs of Coppers Canadian Ale LME
- 3.3 lbs of Beer Makers Draught LME
- 1 cup of Light Brown Sugar
- 2 cups of Crystal Malt 60L
- 3 bags of 2 oz Tetly’s Summer Berry Ale Herbal Tea
- 0.5 oz Styrian Goldings Hops @ 60 Minutes
- 0.5 oz Styrian Goldings Hops @ 20 Minutes
- 1/2 tsp Irish Moss @ 10 Minutes
- 1/2 tsp Yeast Nutrient@ Cold Break
- Coopers Dry Ale Yeast (rehydrated)
- 2 Gallons of cooled, store bought water (added directly to wort to aid in cooling)
All the ingredients ready to be turned into beer!
Procedure –
1) Clean everything. Sanitize everything.
2) In your brew pot bring to boil 2.5 Gallons of Water. In a separate pot bring 0.5 Gallons of water to 70-80c.
3) Steep your grains in the smaller pot for approx. 30 minutes at a constant 70-80c.
4) Once the brew pot is boiling remove the heat and place the tea bags directly into the water. Allow to steep for 5-7 minutes.
These are the secret ingredients that will hopefully impart a nice, sweet, berry-like flavour
5) Add grain steeped water to brew pot, add extracts and sugars. Return water to boil and pitch the bittering hops.
6) Pitch the flavouring hops, irish moss, etc at appropriate times. Prepare an ice bath.
A lid can help keep your temperatures stable and achieve a boil quickly
7) At 60 minutes remove from and add to ice bath. Cool to about 40c and move to the fermentor. Add the cooled store bought water to bring the temperature down to room (~25c).
Rehydrate yeast and pitch.
You do not want to pitch the yeast at too high or too low of a temperature.
The OG reading was around 1.055 and I am hoping to achieve a 1.015-1.020 for the FG. I am a little worried about the yeast I used, simply because I may have rehydrated it at a bad temperature. If I do not see any air bung action by tomorrow night I will repitch another package of yeast Monday.