American Wheat, and the coming Strawberry Breeze experiment

The current brew

So I've cooked up the American Wheat kit and thrown it in a primary fermenter.  I've moved away from using a plastic bucket as my primary fermenter, to a 6.5gal carboy for three good reasons:

1. I can watch the fermentation process to see how it's progressing.
2. When racking to secondary I can more easily see when the yeast cake has settled, and it's easier to avoid racking it.
3. The plastic buckets absorb some of the odor from previous brews.  Good for wines and 'alcopops', bad for beers.

Admittedly, I doubt #3 actually has an impact on the beer, but I'd rather my equipment smelled fruity than malty.



And on the subject of fruity...

Strawberry Breeze concentrate

I'm going to attempt to brew Welch's Strawberry Breeze into a drinkable chick beer for the girlfriend.  Looking at the ingredients, there's apparently a whole lot more "breeze" (and corn syrup) than "strawberry" in this thing.  Strawberry is what she wants though, and this is the only frozen concentrate with strawberry that Walmart had to offer.

Previous experiments with mango and pineapple have given me a good idea how to proceed.  However, I'm still looking to tweak the process/recipe.  Pineapple Experiment #2 had a strange off flavor that I've narrowed down to either the yeast (brown ale yeast), or the cooking/sterilizing process.  Probably a side effect from being caramelized during cooking, but now I'm curious... can you get DMS from cooking fruit juice?  Maybe I should avoid the cooking process this time and hope for the best?

Another small problem that turned up with Pineapple Experiment #2 was some unwanted post-fermentation.  I used potassium sorbate at the end of the process, but there must have been some yeast still active, because the brew was quite pressurized and dry after a couple of weeks in storage.  So as a foot note, make absolutely sure your yeast is dormant before back-sweetening your chick beer!

Pina Colada experiment #2

I've been working on creating some "chick beers" lately.  I brewed a Mike's Hard Mango Punch clone, and tried my hand at a Pina Colada brew.  Unfortunately, Pina Colada Experiment #1 failed miserably.  You might remember me mentioning how the coconut milk turned rancid smelling and looked terrible.

So I've decided to mix up the ingredients and give it another go.  The most significant change is that I threw out the coconut milk and opted for 1oz coconut extract (fairly expensive stuff).  I also used an ale yeast instead of a champagne yeast, and included malt+sugar in the starter to help it get churning.  Other than the starter, I decided not to add any extra sugar either.  I stuck with the dole frozen pineapple concentrate, but this time I brought it to a boil and cooled it before pitching.  I added the whole 1oz bottle of extract after pitching the yeast.

Frozen Concentrate

The juice turned a light brown color when heating up (I'm assuming some of the sugars caramelized).  The whole kitchen smelt like pineapple for hours afterward.  Yum!

The OG was 1050 before boiling, and I forgot to re-test the gravity after the boil.  I estimate that I started with 144oz of juice before the boil, and ended up with 128oz of juice afterward (almost a perfect gallon), losing 16oz of water.  Anyone want to do the math to figure out my SG after the boil?  I'm guessing 1056?

I also passed the juice through a fine mesh strainer a couple of times to get rid of the thick pulp (I can now easily see the yeast cake).

I'm making a couple of assumptions and hopefully they turn out right:
1. The ale yeast has lower attenuation than the champagne yeast, and furthermore is working on foreign sugars (fructose instead of maltose), so won't ferment as low.  Hopefully this will make a sweeter (and lower abv) final product without as much back sweetening.
2. The juice is concentrated but without preservatives, and I wouldn't exactly call concentrate cans "air-tight".  Bringing the juice up to a boil briefly should counter any wild contaminants that latched on during shipping (or more likely, at walmart).


I've been watching it for a couple of days, and it appears to have nearly completed the primary fermentation cycle.  A heavy yeast cake has settled to the bottom, and the airlock has slowed to a few pops per minute.  I'll double check it later tonight and see how it turned out!