Brew Day: Pomegranate Cream Ale

I made a Watermelon Wheat Ale and that’s about the only fruit beer I’ve made.

So when I sat down with my last kilo of Pilsner malt before restocking, I had various ideas for a simple yet flavorful beer. I was thinking along the lines of a previously brewed Cream Ale and add a bit of fruit puree or fruit juice in the secondary. For a fruit beer a lightly hopped wheat beer seems to be the best base beer, but my plan was to re-brew a slightly different version of my Cream Ale and I will let you know if this forms a good base. My understanding is that it will, but I will wait till I taste the beer and confirm my findings.

The decision about which fruit to use for this beer was simple: the in-season pomegranate. It’s a bit tart and sometimes if they’re not ripe, they can be sour too and choosing the right pomegranates can make all the difference.

There was a bit of an apprehension about how long I should keep the beer in secondary. I had a bit of an issue with the Water Wheat Ale in that the watermelon puree was in the secondary for about 3 days but ended up with a very pronounced vegetal flavor. But if I went with one day in secondary, I fear I may have a high amount of unfermented fruit sugars that can over-carbonate the beers and even give me a few bottle bombs. This brewwiki link said pomegranates are very subtle tasting, and its best to use pomegranate juice sold in stores. That wasn’t much nor was there enough to answer the million questions I had and there wasn’t enough information anywhere else that I could rely on. So I decided to go it alone: add about a litre of fresh pomegranate juice for 2 days and see how things turned out.

Based on this experiment from the folks at brulosophy.com, I targeted a mash temperature of 63°C to extract as much fermentables as possible. I got my hands on a new hop, Horizon, with about 12.3% AA and clean bittering properties and that was chosen for the single hop addition. Before adding the hops to the boil, I smelled it and it had spicy, pungent notes to and I think it will be interesting to see how this hop works with something as simple as a Cream Ale.

From the recipe, it’s a low gravity, really pale yellow beer. But the pomegranate juice with its sugars will raise the alcohol levels slightly and turn the beer to a slightly orange shade from the pale yellow.

Pomegranate Cream Ale (Tasting notes here)

Specifics

Batch size (litres): 8 litres
Type: All Grain, Fruit Beer

IBU: 25

SRM: 2.4, although this will change to a slight orange with the addition of pomegranate juice

OG: 1.036

Grains and Sugars

1.2 kg Pilsner

300 grams Flaked Rice

Hops

6 grams Horizon @ 45

Other Additions

Add 1 litre of fresh pomegranate juice to the beer in secondary for 2 days after a week of fermentation.

Yeast

Fermentis S-04 Ale Yeast

Schedules

Mash at 63°C for 60 minutes.

Batch sparged at 80°C.

Boiled for 45 minutes.