[ahaintern]

So i had a crazy brew day yesterday. My first attempt at all-grain brew in a bag was with a classic rauchbier:

3lbs rauchmalt
5 lbs marris otter
1 lb crystal 40
1 lb victory
.25 lb chocolate

My mash schedule was hectic to say the least. The temperature was fluctuating between 145 and 160 constantly for 90 minutes. Estimated OG was supposed to be 1.055. Measured gravity was 1.035 at the end. I believe the efficiency was something like 50%.

So here's what I did. I had a few beers and got creative, and decided to add 2 lbs of cane sugar to bump the gravity up to where it was supposed to be. Then I saw 2 lbs of blueberries in my fridge and decided to boil those up and throw them in too. Then I saw some ginger peach black tea bags and tossed two of those in there. Oh yea.

That leaves us with:

Base beer recipe (smoked rauchbier) with a bad mash
2 lbs cane sugar
2 lbs blueberries (boiled and smashed)
2 bags packets of ginger peach black tea


What do y'all think? Is this beer going to be drinkable? Did i get drunk and do too much crazy stuff? Is it ruined because I didn't mash efficiently? I brewed yesterday and it's bubbling away healthy now, I used a good starter of German Ale yeast, so at least fermentation will be good. Thoughts?

Cheers!

Daniel G
AHA Intern

[denny]

I think first of all you shouldn't have boiled the blueberries.  Not only will you lose flavor, you might set the pectins and end up with blueberry jelly beer.

[dbeechum]

Maybe crazier than something I would normally do and that's saying something.

I agree with Denny that the boiled blueberries is less than ideal - you'll probably be hazy, but not jelly.

Fruits usually work best frozen and added later during the ferment. The Trader Joes tea should be thrown in at the end of the boil as a steeper. (Remember most black tea wants to be steeped at ~190F)

[ahaintern]

Will adding pectic enzyme in secondary help with that blueberry problem?

Any thoughts on how it'll taste with the bad mash and sugar cane?

[tschmidlin]

At this point just RDWHAHB.  Taste it in a week or so and see if it was inspired madness or just regular madness.

It's too late for pectic enzyme, you need that pre-fermentation.  I'm would bet that the taste will be "interesting".

[dbeechum]

Yeah, at this point.. ride with it. see what you have coming out of the ferment and then make adjustments out of there.

[ahaintern]

Word, maybe I'll just add a bunch more crazy stuff to secondary to "fix" it if it tastes funny

[dbeechum]

You'd be surprised at how often that works horrifyingly well.

[Jimmy K]

Word, maybe I'll just add a bunch more crazy stuff to secondary to "fix" it if it tastes funny

Good idea.
 
Two lbs of blueberries probably won't add much fruit character anyway. Boiling the tea bag might had released tannins (blueberry skins have tannins too). Taste it and you'll know.

[ahaintern]

By the way, it's been bubbling away for a few days now, but the smell coming from the airlock is absolutely horrible. Never smelled anything like that coming from the airlock, it's like beer farts mixed with just plain bad stench.

Not sure if it's the German ale yeast (never used it before), the blueberries (never used them before), the fact that it's all grain (never done all-grain before), or if there's something wrong with it, but it smells baddd. Just thought it was funny to note that after all the things that have happened to it.

[jeffy]

Hopefully it will be to your advantage that all that smell is leaving the beer.  By all means wait until it is done and tasted before you do anything rash.