[morticaixavier]

Well,

I have been meaning to try brewing a mixed fermentation for a while now and just haven't gotten a round tuit. As the stones sang '...if you try sometimes, you just might find...'.

Well I brewed up a bit of mixed up beer. Was going to be a wit beer but I wanted to add some rye and then the LHBS didn't have any wit yeast so I got saison yeast instead. still added a couple oz of dried meyer lemon and some black pepper. went from 1.036 to 1.003. ~.75 gallons were drawn off and put in a jug with 1.5 lbs of persian mulberries (frozen, thawed).

after about 1 week on the berries the beer was an amazing cranberry color. after 2 weeks on the berries I noticed a pellicle starting to form. 'oh well' I said to myself, 'might as well let it ride now'. another week and my wife said she saw what looked like mold (pretty sure it wasn't, just pellicle on the purple berries looked a little green). so I racked it off, primed and bottled (2 22oz bottles and about 10 oz for tasting).

The smell was... funky. The taste, while a little sweet because of priming sugar was actually kind of nice. A little vinegar at first but after that passed some really complex barnyard, leather stuff going on with the flowery fruity mulberry notes. The persian mulberries have a much more complex, slightly tart flavour than the 'normal' mulberries and you can really taste it in this beer.

So I primed to ~3 volumes figuring it was a pretty low FG and any wild bugs in there didn't really have much to work with. now it's in the closet and I am anxiously awaiting the results. I figure I'll give it two weeks in the bottle and then taste one.

with only the four bottles I am a little worried this will be an AMAZING beer that I will NEVER be able to reproduce. but I figure if it's that amazing I can always culture some bottle dregs.

anyway, no question just commentary on a fun and interesting experience! also, persian mulberries in beer seem to be very promising. too bad they are so hard to find.


**EDIT**

as the mulberries (and likely what ever bugs are working in there) came from the east bay berkeley area, and they are PERSIAN mulberries, would it be totally over the top politically incorrect to call this beer...

Hipster Burkah