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2/10/2023
came out quite tart but drinkable. tonight we will have a taste test to decide if we want to milkshake-ize it with another lb of lactose and a vanilla bean, or is it acceptable as is.
should be noted two alternate names for this beer was fruitbat and forgot about tre
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1/28/2023
the berry ipa idea is still alive on a different branch but here we are taking a swerve for a tealean beer, a fruited wheat / milkshake ipa hybrid, lower in abv, lower hops, but still the fruit.
the base is more milkshake than wheat beer, i think i will go ahead with the lactose too to balance out any tartness from the fruit. should i go full on milkshake then and do vanilla bean too?
unsure about the fruit amount, for mango and strawberry ive done 6lb but blueberry and raspberry i usually do 4lb. all the fruit can come out tart and funky if too much.
brewing this for teal and nana for tre's bday
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10/26/2021
night before, adjusting slightly for grainfather g40 - volumes, efficiency. using tap water - mash pH is 5,55 which is barely in range...add some acid malt.
Calculator is predicting 1085/1019/8.74% but as we know the fruit doesnt really contribute much fermentable sugar, although this is a mix - strawberry might have more than others. also i am unclear on the gravities most times since i add the fruit after fermentation begins...
yeast pitch rate calculator saying i need to more than double my cells for proper pitch on this high gravity beer. eek.
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9/24/2021
reworking this from blueberry for the fruit medley. removing the DME and boosting abv before fruit. doing 6lbs? fruit instaed of 3? not sure what hops to use...
nb blackberry milkshake uses citra and ekuanot. i still like mosaic for the blueberry. ekunot has some berry notes apparently but a lot of other flavors that dont go with fruit medley on paper. citra similarly has more tropical notes.
ekuanot : lime, apple, melon, berry, cedar, papaya, bay leaves, eucalyptus, clove, sage, and tobacco.
citra : Strongly tropical and lush with a host of fruit flavors including peach, passionfruit, guava, lychee, grapefruit, lime and gooseberry.
mosaic : citrus oil, balsam pine, blueberry, peach and tropical fruit. Notable mango character, but also shades of lime and mandarin orange.
nb milkshake ipa recipe : https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2785/6868/t/3/assets/B11883-AG-BlackberryMilkshakeIPA1-1613415583741.pdf
lets leave out the lactose in this one just to distinguish it from milkshake
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Cant remember which day I added blueberry and DME. Tonight is 5/23 I get FG 1016. Noticing from notes last time I used london 3 not rva.
5/11/2021
brew day
making a copy for indigo. came out to 6 gallons and 1067 which is 7.6%. was considering adding .5 lb dme to boost it to 8...nah. also just realizing this rva manchester is estimating 85% attenuation to 1010 FG but first batch was actually wy1318 london iii which came out to 83% attenuation and 1018 final gravity... i think i might just run it as is and take this all as learning experience.
it appears i did get almost the exact same 60% efficiency as i did last time, but last time i ended up at 1072 OG vs 1067 this time. the difference is i have approximately 6 gallons of wort. even with all the hops i was over on wort. after the boil it still appeared to be around 7 gallons in the kettle. i guess i should just start accounting for .5 gallons boil loss and .5 trub loss. so 6.5 pre boil, 6 post boil, and 5.5 in fermentor.
also just to note, for yeast i made a double starter for the rva jar and will split the yeast half for this batch and half for a raspberry wheat later this week.
4/1/2011
Kegged last week, tasted great already, the hops were present and pairing well with the blueberry but slightly subdued so I added another 3oz mosaic dry hop to the keg to even it out at 1lb total mosaic. Having a full pint tonight, its money.
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3/22/2021
opened today for gravity reading and to add dry hop. 1.018. smells great. tastes great. not as darkly colored as previous blueberry beer but its like a hazy pink on its way to purple. tastes great, a little harsh bitter note, could be the mosaic? there is no bittering hops in this brew.
should be good! should be ready soon! will leave it to dry hop for 3 days then take out the bag, take another gravity reading to make sure the fruit has fermented out / no further activity. after that will need to cold crash for a day or two then keg. possibly add another 2nd dry hop to the keg. i have a few oz left of the bag.
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3/3/2021
initial recipe formulation
copying base recipe from mango maya. keeping basically the entire grain bill, adjusting efficiency to 60, removing DME and adjusting base malt to get to 8%. im hoping to cook the oats and get better efficiency than in the past. if we end up with 6% it should still be tasty.
axing the 1lb honey malt - i dont think it plays as well with blueberry as it does with mango. also its heavy on lovibond making th ebase beer more orange colored which goes ok with mango but for blueberry im hoping more toward yellow hazy ipa base beer as a bright backdrop for the purple blueberries.
making up a new hop schedule, 100% mosaic. not sure how much to use. starting with 13oz - about the same as mango maya. will probably buy a bag so if it needs 3oz more in a 2nd dry hop, that will be available.
decided on only 3lb blueberry - last time i used blueberry i did 6lbs and it was way too much. i think it will not be lacking in blueberry color and flavor, especially accented by the mosaic.
could maybe do without the vanilla bean? and lactose? prob not.
