Making a "Beerscht" -- beet amber ale -- recipe critique?

[The5thHerring]

So! I'm considering making a beer that bears actual resemblance to Borscht (i.e. a bit sweet/sour too, not just flavored and colored with beetroot). Here's the recipe I've got so far:

BEERSCHT - 1 gallon

1.2 lb amber malt extract syrup
5 oz beet sugar (brown, less refined)
5 oz lactose
1/2 beet, cubed, slightly crushed, and frozen
0.25 oz Lublin hops (or Saaz, if I can't find Lublin)
1 cup pasteurized beet kvass (made from lactofermentation of the other half of the beet, juiced)
2 peppercorns
a spicy ale yeast (not sure which yet)

Boil all ingredients except the kvass and the hops for 30 minutes in 2 quarts of water. Add hops and boil another 10 minutes. Add (previously pasturized) kvass and boil another 5. Strain and sparge into 1.5 quarts of cold water in the fermenter. Add more water to 1 gallon if necessary; pitch yeast at room temperature. Single-stage fermentation.

--

So I have a few questions. First, has anyone made kvass or similar out of soured vegetable or fruit juice? What yeast or bacteria did you use (or just wild)?

And how much do you suppose I should put in? The 1 cup is conservative.

And most importantly, does anyone have any yeast suggestions??

 

[Chevette Girl]

Sorry, no useful comments other than I love the concept of Beerscht, that's my kind of crazy!

 

[wildoates]

I must confess that I read that as "beer-$#|+"", which, given how I feel about the taste of beets, sounds about right to me.

But it sounds interesting nonetheless, so by all means ignore me and carry on.

 

[AToE]

Needs cabbage!

 

[cam07ds]

Well I've had a Beet Mead interesting but never a beet beer. I will be interested in how this turns out.

Steve

 

[Braxton]

I have had pickled beets before that were made by the standard pickling processes, similar to lacto-fermented cucumber pickles. Wild bacteria should be sufficient, but a starter culture from live pickle juice or sauerkraut juice would speed things up and make it more consistent. As for Kvass, I typically think of that as being made from grains, with other stuff occasionally added in. It is also lacto fermented but usually starts with grains or stale bread, which tend to have lots of lacto bacteria on them.

I've also made beet soda by boiling beets in water for about 1/2 hour, then straining and adding sugar. This works well at getting the beet flavor in there. I don't recommend juicing boiled beets, that was a total mess.

I'd suggest either a neutral ale yeast like Wyeast 1056/Safale US-05, or a Belgian yeast with some phenolic character, like Wyeast 3944. If you want spicy, maybe Wyeast 3711 (very dry, lemony) or 3522 (slightly fruity) or Safale T-58. Watch out if you are planning on adding unpasteurized Kvass, lacto bacteria can really take off if the culture is large enough. An alternative would be adding the kvass after primary fermentation is complete, to limit the available sugars, or to pasteurize it and blend it in to taste at bottling or in secondary.

 

[TheAlchemist]

Betelgeuse is my most drinkable mead to date. Interesting.

 

[The5thHerring]

Thanks all! Especially Braxton, that's exactly what I needed. I think I'll be pasteurizing the "kvass" before I put it in. (I only call it kvass because a cookbook I have refers to naturally fermented beet juice as "beet kvass"... Before that, I had only seen it in reference to water with stale rye bread or the like.)

I think for the souring process I'll just shred and boil half the beet in a few cups of water, add whey strained from yogurt, and see what happens in a few days. (No kefir, kraut or live pickles on hand.) Beet-pickling recipes I've perused all add salt, to "inhibit putrefying bacteria," but I'm not making pickles after all!

Also, the T-58 sounds perfect. Just what I need.

And AToE: har har! Although I did briefly consider letting it sit on some cabbage in secondary. Maybe if the single-stage version does well.

 

[The5thHerring]

Alas, the beet juice got moldy and I had to toss it.

I had shredded the beet, boiled for 3 or 4 minutes, then dumped it all in a sanitized Ball jar (with a paper towel screwed on top, rather than a lid). Added a little whey (strained from yogurt) after it cooled down. No signs of life for a couple days, then some white mold floating on top.

I probably should have either a) aerated the juice before "pitching" the whey; b) used unwashed organic raisins or the like for my lactobacteria; or both. Trying again soon.

 

[Braxton]

In many lacto ferments there is a whitish mold called the "bloom" that forms on the top. It is not particularly harmful and can be simply skimmed off. Many guides on making sauerkraut advise this. In my experience, shorter time frames, cooler temperatures, and closed fermentations can help avoid it.

 

[The5thHerring]

Well! Good thing it was only a $2 experiment at that point. I'll try again and steel my nerves. The mold was white, as I recall.

 

[The5thHerring]

It's started!

I have a jar of beet juice hopefully souring on my windowsill (shredded, boiled, decanted, shaken, cooled, inoculated with unwashed organic raisins) and a gallon of wort fermenting in the basement. Final recipe for wort as follows.

1 beet, chopped

--boiled for 5 mins, until the dirt smell was lessened and the chunks tasted good. Removed chunks.

1 lb extra-light malt extract
1/4 lb corn sugar
1/5 oz Northern Brewer hops (8%)

--boiled these in the beet-water for 35 minutes.

1/4 tsp Irish moss
3 oz lactose
3 peppercorns
1 bay leaf

--put these in and boiled another 15 minutes.

Sparged, cooled to 75 F and pitched Safale T-58.

- - -

So now (after a day) the souring juice smells like dirt again, and the fermenting wort smells like yams. I have a feeling that I should have used actual malt grains and mashed them with the beet juice before boiling the wort, since there are probably now a LOT of starches hanging out in the beer.

Anything I can do about that, at this point?

Regardless, I'll let the juice keep souring until the beer is at completion (probably 4 days, judging by past experience with gallon batches) and blend, after pasteurizing the juice!, right before bottling.

 

[Braxton]

Well, starches can be detrimental to the final product, but I've made starchy beer before with moderate success (as in, it didn't taste terrible). It is supposed to shorten the shelf-life of the beer, as bacteria would love to eat the starches, and it will make it hazy and more thick tasting. Besides adding some commercially available enzymes, like amylase enzyme, I can't think of any way to break the starches down. You'll just have to see how it turns out.

 

[The5thHerring]

Well, since it's just a gallon batch, I'll probably skip the amylase. Next time I make this, I'll definitely mash the juice with malted barley before boiling.

I'm also skipping the amylase because I have NO idea whether this batch has been ruined already. There is a stench coming off the wort like sour farts! The fart bit I'm not concerned with, but the sour bit is ambiguous.

[edit: called the LHBS and amylase is 99c an ounce... so ok! I'll stick in an ounce. See what happens.]

At least two people on the internet have said they've experienced sour smells/flavors from T-58. One guy said there was a slight tang added to the taste, which mellowed a little after two weeks; one guy got sour smells from a starter he made with T-58. (not sure if he ever used the starter.) Other sources tell me that if you get any sour smells at all, in beermaking, you're sunk, you're pretty much infected -- but those two anecdotes give me enough pause to wait and see.

Also, part of why I thought it would be starchy is that it was (and remains) clouded up like a jar of mud... very much unlike other beers I've done... but apparently T-58 has astonishingly bad flocculation properties, and I'll need to cold crash to clear it.

Conclusions: I don't know whether it will be over-starchy; I don't know whether bacteria are already munching the starches (or whatever) and producing the sour smell, or whether that's just crazy old T-58.

 

[The5thHerring]

I suppose this is a brewlog now.

Well, I pasteurized the juice (brought it to a boil, then took it off heat and let it cool with the lid on until it was no longer steaming) and added it to the wort. It had soured only minimally, so I figured there wasn't much need for careful blending. It certainly added a great color to the beer.

The T-58 had been smelling more and more like normal beer lately. After I added the juice, though, fermentation started again a little. It's more or less done now, but smells sour again. Here's hoping it's the same T-58 blowoff as last time, not any bugs accidentally introduced with the beet juice!

I plan on cold crashing tonight to help it clear, then bottling tomorrow.

-oh, and the LHBS guy was mistaken about having amylase, so I didn't end up adding any.

 

[The5thHerring]

Left in the fridge overnight. Boiled up the priming sugar, then cooled it to a bit below room temperature. Added cooled sugar water, stirred very gently with a sanitized spoon, let it sit for a minute or so, and then bottled.

Smell was strong -- I can't really describe it. Beery for sure, but with a hint of something similar to the way the head on a Lindemanns Kriek smells. "Funky" might be the word for it.

I haven't been taking gravity readings, or tasting it at all! Ready to be surprised when I crack my first bottle two weeks from now. Also, I find that SG readings aren't too necessary for small batches of beer, since what little distance it might go after the bubbling stops is much less than even what the priming sugar will do to it in the bottle.

(Also: I use a glass sun-tea jar as my fermenter for gallon batches of beer, so there's a tap just above the level the yeast usually settle at. I just bottle from there! No racking, no siphoning. Makes experimenting fun and easy!)

 

[The5thHerring]

Delicious! It's fruity and smooth, yet high in alcohol, and the color is fantastic. A rich magenta. Not much head, but next time I'll try sticking in an ounce or so of torrified wheat to create some, and/or soak some malted barley in the beet-water and include a protein rest.

T-58 was a wild ride! A menagerie of smells. But the final product isn't even particularly distinctive in odor -- it smells like a nice, fruity ale. And the taste reminds me vaguely of a grand cru. (The LHBS guys said it didn't even taste particularly starchy, which I had been worried about.) This is a definite repeat!