Brew Day - Blackberry Pinot Noir

Some of the concentration cans we used.

Wait. What?  This is a wine. Not a beer.  Why is it here.  Well the easy answer is that this is the base for my sour stouts.  This Blackberry Pinot Noir is going to be the base for my new barrel.  This is a 6 gallon barrel that is made of Hungarian Oak.  Not as harsh as American but not as mellow as French.  It's said to have great vanilla flavors.  This just seems to be the answer for a sour stout in my book.

The barrel will hold this Blackberry Pinot Noir for a few month and then hold a batch of my Pitchfork Black stout (not the batch I just brewed - a new batch) before the sour stout goes into the barrel.  It could be around 6 months before this happens.  This is just step one.

I am actually excited to try this wine when it is done.    Something about making a recipe on your own with guidance from the internet vs just following directions from a kit.  It's more on you and your idea of what can be created vs matching the expectations of the kit.

I took about 4-6 ounces of the juice prior to the chemicals and whatnot being added to the must so I can use on my curent batch of sour stout.  This will be a good idea to see what flavors I can potentially come up with.

The must of the blackberries and Pinot
prior to adding the water

Here is how I plan to break down the 5 gallons.  This of course can change based on how things go – but this is the plan:

1 gallon will be bottled straight.
2 gallons will be bottled with the blackberry pinot noir juice and some oak.
The remaining 1.5-2 gallons will be saved and used for the first batch of the barrel sours.  This will help get the barrel beer get to the appropriate flavor profile quicker. (which I will brew over Xmas break) .

If the wine goes into the barell in late January or early February and the the Pitchfork Black goes in next for a few months, we can be looking at June/July before the new batch of sour stout would need to be put into the barrel.  This gives us 6 months to get the new sour started.  That 1.5-2 gallons of already soured beer should help speed that up.

At this time I hope the barrel is not pushing out as much oak flavor and that I can then let the beer age another 4-6 month in the barrel before I being the solera mixing method.

Fun times await.

Coming up next are bottle tastings for my carbonation tests.  I am using the new capsules from Northern Brewer to carbonate my sours.  They have a small amount of yeast and the appropriate amount of sugar in each capsule.  We will be tasting the follonwing beers on Christmas:

1. Straight Lambic - I used plain sugar tabs.  I want to see what happens on this one.
2. Sour Red - Hopefully the beer will carbonate and the beer we tasted at Thanksgiving will be a completely different beer.
3. Sour Stout - This will be the straight version.  This is the first carbonation test for this batch which was brewed in March of 2013.

For those interested in the wine recipe here is what we used

1. 96oz can of Vintners Blackberries
2. 3lb can of Blackberry Puree
3. 1 Can of Alexanders Pinot Noir concentrate
4. 11lbs 6oz of Sugar
5. Typcial wine chemicals etc per usual kits
6. RC212 yeast

Many tastings will be posted in the next month or so.
Stay tuned.

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Update 12-15-14
Yeast added.

 























Update 12-18-14
Fermentation well underway