Adding wine to beer?

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kiwirevo

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Has anyone added a wine to a beer after it's fermented? It's a hard thing to search for as I get a lot of wine or beer results.
I was thinking about Pinot Noir & Porter or maybe a Sauvignon Blanc & Nelson Sauvin Pilsner. Just adding 1-2 % abv increase via the wine, what ever volume that would work out as.
Any ideas on how it would work would be great.
 
I would start by blending in a glass to see if you like the taste. That's a big risk to take on 5 gallons of beer. It's more popular to age beer in used wine barrels, which would be way less wine flavor than you're talking about. You could get some oak chips and soak those in the wine to recreate that flavor.
 
I thing it's a great idea to blend in small amounts before you do a whole batch. I've never heard of anyone doing this. Let us know how it turns out.
 
As someone who started this hobby by making country wines and expanding into beer, I love this idea! You could add orange (or berry) wine to a wheat beer.... Now I'm tempted to play with my honey wheat as it goes into the bottle. Any idea what a treated (k-meta and sorbate) wine would do to live beer yeast as I bottle? Would it still condition or would the sorbate and k-meta kill the ale yeast too?
 
I'm currently fermenting a triple that I'm adding Riesling to. It'll be conditioning for quite a while though, so I won't have results for quite some time.
 
I just made a CDA where I added oak chips that were soaked in cab sauv, and it came out great! Citrus hops played well with the wine. Im planning to do a similar thing to a porter.
 
Look for DFH Noble Rot. Probably the closest thing to a beer and wine hybrid. They add unfermented grape juice and grape musk. It comes out like a very dry carbonated white wine. I didn't care for it but I'm not a wine person at all.
 
zmanzorro said:
Look for DFH Noble Rot. Probably the closest thing to a beer and wine hybrid. They add unfermented grape juice and grape musk. It comes out like a very dry carbonated white wine. I didn't care for it but I'm not a wine person at all.
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DFH Red and White is a blend and I was unimpressed. YMMV.
 
There's a brewery in my area (Black Raven) that had a Saison that was aged in white wine barrels and a BSDA aged in red wine barrels. Both excellent. Hard to find anything commercial, but delicious if done right. I intend to explore the options at least one or two more times this year. Go for it! Pioneer it (and post recipes and results)!
 
I guess it will be a huge trial and error thing, there's so many wines and so many beers that blending is going to be near impossible to get right
 
All the DFH brews are made with grape must so the grain and grapes coferment together. I guess I'll just have to try a few bottles when I'm bottling my beers add some wine and see how they go.
 
Sorry, but my first thought was WTFARFIKNUGEN??? but I can see that on occasion some stouts aged in wine barrels may turn out good. I'd like to hear how it turns out for you...wine barrels and blending are different animals though.
 
kiwirevo said:
I guess it will be a huge trial and error thing, there's so many wines and so many beers that blending is going to be near impossible to get right
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"Right" may not be the correct term. There are so many options and variables that you have a ton of possibilities to make awesome and unique beer!
 
RainyDay said:
"Right" may not be the correct term. There are so many options and variables that you have a ton of possibilities to make awesome and unique beer!
Click to expand...

I guess I mean right as in the final product being as good as or better than the individual parts
 
1fast636 said:
yea dog fich heads 61 is 60min IPA with red wine and its amazing
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Doh! I've been looking and looking and looking for it but cannot get my hands on it so I just convinced myself that it would be terrible. Now I really want it!
 
Found this thread on a search. In some ways, relieved to see I'm not the first to think about this.
Did anyone do it?
I was thinking of starting with some oak chips soaked in chardonnay, added to a blonde ale in secondary. Wasn't sure how much chard.
If you've added wine in any way, please share your results.

Thanks!
 
Ive added wine a couple times. First to a CDA (with Kolsch yeast). I soaked oak chips in cab sauv for a couple weeks; probably an ounce of chips and 4-8oz of wine. Subtle, but nice. Ive also added 10-12oz of chianti to a porter. At first it was present, but not overwhelming. After a couple months it started to fade. I have another brew planned for it, but I think ill up the amount.


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This is my ultimate dream in brewing. I love great beer, love great wine, and have had enough commercial hybrids to know together they are fantastic.

I mixed 2/3 Belgian Blonde with Sauvignon Blanc, rather good. But I think that there's way more opportunity to be creative, just haven't experimented much, yet. Stout + Red Zinfandel is my next try.
 
Cyclman said:
This is my ultimate dream in brewing. I love great beer, love great wine, and have had enough commercial hybrids to know together they are fantastic.

I mixed 2/3 Belgian Blonde with Sauvignon Blanc, rather good. But I think that there's way more opportunity to be creative, just haven't experimented much, yet. Stout + Red Zinfandel is my next try.
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hey there- resurrecting this thread as i'm about to do something similar. an all brett farmhouse beer with some red wine. do you have a typical amount you add? or at least a good starting point?

and is this always post ferment? i was toying with adding it during knockout, say around 160 or so, just to make sure i dont introduce any weird bugs from the wine into the beer. (acetobacter specifically)
 
@SanPancho If you keg, one 750 ml bottle of wine at kegging is a good starting point. Very present, but not overwhelming. When doing mixed culture/farmhouse beers, it gets really fun when adding unfermented must either in secondary or as a “co-fermentation” from day one. Lots of cool possibilities to explore. I’ve gone as high as 50/50 wine/beer with excellent results. I tend to prefer the white wine versions, but I’ve done a few reds that were fantastic. I would personally avoid adding wine to a beer at 160 degrees. I feel like you’ll get a weird cooked character to it (but I can’t be sure because I’ve never actually done it, just not the way I would approach it). If following basic brewing “best practices” of at least making an attempt to minimize oxygen, I don’t think you have anything to fear from acetobacter. Just treat it like any kind of fruit addition. They also sell one gallon wine kits. Adding the undiluted juice pack from those seems to be the perfect amount for a 5-6 gallon batch, unless your are going for a true 50/50 hybrid. Bonus they are sterile/sanitary just like the canned fruit purées out on the market.
 
DrKnow said:
@SanPancho If you keg, one 750 ml bottle of wine at kegging is a good starting point. Very present, but not overwhelming. When doing mixed culture/farmhouse beers, it gets really fun when adding unfermented must either in secondary or as a “co-fermentation” from day one. Lots of cool possibilities to explore. I’ve gone as high as 50/50 wine/beer with excellent results. I tend to prefer the white wine versions, but I’ve done a few reds that were fantastic. I would personally avoid adding wine to a beer at 160 degrees. I feel like you’ll get a weird cooked character to it (but I can’t be sure because I’ve never actually done it, just not the way I would approach it). If following basic brewing “best practices” of at least making an attempt to minimize oxygen, I don’t think you have anything to fear from acetobacter. Just treat it like any kind of fruit addition. They also sell one gallon wine kits. Adding the undiluted juice pack from those seems to be the perfect amount for a 5-6 gallon batch, unless your are going for a true 50/50 hybrid. Bonus they are sterile/sanitary just like the canned fruit purées out on the market.
Click to expand...
Thanks. unfortunately I missed harvest by many months, so all I’m finding are kits for 5gallon batches. I did find a random “grape concentrate” 1liter for wine, but gonna pass on that for now. I think for now will start with some finished wine added into the farmhouse beer, as that’s basically what’s happening when the beer sits in the barrel. I’m gonna start with a half batch first so I think half bottle or red should be cheap and easy starting point.
 
So I grow grapes in the side of the house and I used my first harvest to make a wild-fermented sour. I let the Muscat grapes ferment naturally, then pitched them into a pale Belgian base, ~6%, 20IBU, and Oak cubes. Let that sit for a year and it was one of the best beers I have made according to them's as love sours. I still use that bacteria/wild yeast culture as our house sour culture, but the results just aren't the same without the grape juice. Our first batch was 750ml wine to 5G beer. I have a much larger harvest on the vine right now, so I have options for how much to add this year.
 

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