Yo,
So, I'm doing a Brooklyn Summer Clone for the party and mixing it with 100% pure grapefruit juice. I did this once before and the result was pretty good. If you like tart, grapefruit beers, then this is probably up your alley. However, for the party I was thinking about trying to sweeten it up a bit. I still like the idea of using 100% grapefruit juice, but is there a way I can make it a bit sweeter? Is this as simple as adding some sugar when I add the juice as well?
Basically the timeline looks like this (transfering into different fermenters/vessels each stage):
Brewed 7/17/14
Dry Hopping 7/24/14
Adding Juice/sugar? 7/31/14
Kegging 8/7/14
Your thoughts? And if sugar, how much do you think?
Lastly, how would I calculate ABV if I have 3 gal of beer (most likely will be around 5.3% or so) and add 2gal of juice to it? It's not still 5.3% ABV, correct?
Thanks guys! I appreciate your feedback.
Take care,
Eric
A radler, traditionally, is just beer and soda. Word on the street was there was a bike race going through the mountains of Bavaria, and everyone stopped at the this one guy's pub way up in the mountains, not accustom to so many patrons at once, dude was running out of beer, so he started mixing it with lemon soda to stretch out his supply and everyone loved it. That being said, this is a great idea, I thought of doing that as well, just ran out if time. What I would do/was gonna do, was just get some fancy assed blood orange soda from whole foods. A 2-liter of squirt would do it too, any citrus soda should work well, try it small scale first just mixing up a single glass until you find the ratio and which soda you prefer, then just hit that ratio in the keg. That was my plan until other things sucked up my time to do it, not having done it, I can't guarantee it's awesomeness...but that was my plan. Also, to calculate the ABV:
1 gal = 128 oz
3 gal = 384 oz of beer
384 x .054 (5.4%) = 20.73 oz alcohol in 3 gal
Watering that down to 5 gallons:
128 oz x 5 = 640 oz in 5 gallons
20.73/640 = .032
3.2 % ABV
Damn, look at you with the math!
I used to hate math...before I knew I needed it to drink better...
IMHO, you'd be adding sugar at the end anyway. I say give it a try without sugar and if it absolutely needs it, do it. It sounds really tasty and I love grapefruit radlers. But, at the mention of sugar, I taste something too sweet....
The main problem is that any sugar you add (whether in the juice or in addition to it) prior to serving is going to get (at least partially) eaten by the yeast, leaving the beer tart and. IMHO, the easiest way would be to just serve the beer with a splash of grapefruit juice. I believe commercial shandy/radler beers get around this by filtering all of the yeast out of their beer before bottling or pasteurizing in the bottle.
Alternatively, if you combine the juice/sugar and the beer immediately prior to kegging, chilling, and carbing, the chilled yeast will probably be dormant enough that they won't eat too much of the sugars.
I know Lake Effect has made Radlers with the method that Eric and Joe have proposed and they haven't had any issues when they have a quick serving window and they have kept the kegs cold prior to serving.
What about adding xylitol or sorbitol to the keg or fermentor? Does anyone know off hand if these substances are fermentable or if they will impart any off flavors?
+1 for trying the artificial sweetener route. We could also try sucralose or aspartame, which are theoretically non fermentable, although I have no idea how much to put into a 5 gallon batch.
Alternatively, you could go the whole hog and pasteurize your beer before adding fruit soda, then force carbonate.
I don't think artificial sweetner is the way to go, it seems to me like complicating things a bit too much, plus there's unknown interactions with those chemicals, pH, yeast health, off flavors, hop interactions, a lot can go wrong. Looking at the history of the style, it's merely splashing some soda in a beer that's it, I think that for the freshest and best tasting presentation for the Brew-B-Q, Eric should sign up to bartend (shameless plug) and secure the station serving his beer, and ice out some two liters of squirt, make some homemade grapefruit soda, or buy some fancy stuff from whole food, determine the correct ratio, and serve it freshly mixed in each glass. Pouring the soda in the keg that morning could work well too, especially if 2 liters of squirt are the option chosen as those don't have a very fancy appearance, the keg will be iced and there won't be time for the remaining yeast to really react before it all got drank. Another over engineered idea would be a Y fitting going to a keg of soda and a keg of the beer in question, merging to a single picnic tap, but it would be difficult to control the mixture and would likely take some tinkering before it worked just right. Either way, leaving the beer untouched until the morning of and then mixing in soda somehow, whether in the keg or in the glass, in my opinion, will result in the flavor you're looking for.
Could use lactose to sweeten without adding fermentables.
Couple of notes about back sweetening beer: