ben the brewman
Well-Known Member
It should settle out to a nice cloudy beer in a few weeks man. I would worry about it too much.
How much watermelon juice have you been using? Still 2.5?
Until they come up with a hop that smells like watermelon, I think a pale ale would make the watermelon useless. Also, too much bitter would kill the nice faint, sweet, watermelon aspect, IMHO.
I have been wanting to brew this beer and found this post. My local home brew store owner just got back from a trip in Seattle and went to a lot of breweries there. He went to one and they had an "experimental hop" that is not released and is supposed to have an amazing watermelon flavor. Somehow he was able to track down the grower and was able to get 11lbs. I know half of it is almost gone but I plan on going tomorrow to pick up as much as I can.
Now my question should I attempt this recipe with the experimental hop? AA on hop is 11 if i recall correctly.
And recommendations for yeast?
Its time for batch number 2 for the year. I think im gonna try it with the watermelon juice from kroger this time if they still have it.
apologies if this question has already been answered in this thread, but do we know what the impact of adding 4 cups of watermelon juice in a 5 gallon batch is on our specific gravity?
thanks...
-KD
Ben -
i saw an old post where you came up with a gravity reading of 40 (1.04) for pure watermelon juice...
here's where i'm confused: that's 40 points per pound per gallon, right?
so if I use 4 cups, which should be about 2lbs of watermelon juice (working off the fact that a gallon of milk weighs 9 lbs, so a quart should weigh about 2 lbs... and yes, I know that milk is not equal to watermelon juice), that's about 80 points, divided by 5 gallons = 16 points of gravity? that is not insignificant...
thoughts?
is my math bad? (it very well may be...)
Ben -
thanks for the reply... I'm not doubting you, but can you explain how you came up with: "It would be the same as adding .5 gallons of water and .45 pounds of dry malt. It will only raise the gravity .004 points"
thanks...
answering my own question, from another friend:
"The fault in the logic is that the watermelon juice does not have the potential (or typical yield) of 40 pts per lb per gal. Because it's already fully diluted and we're reading the SG. It does have 40 pt per gal, and thus there is 12.5 pts in that 5 cups. When you add it to 5 gal of 1.04 wort you then get 212.5 total grav pts for your final wort. And the final volume is 5.3125 gal. And so 212.5/5.3125 = 40, thus 1.04 SG. "
So i've only ever brewed two batches of beer (24L or 6.3 Gallons) and they were both pretty simple and i didn't mess around with them very much. This recipe seems like something great to brew up for the summer, but I'm a little confused about some things:
From what i've read, specific gravity has something to do with the ratio of sugars and water in the brew, which would obviously be changed with the addition of Watermelon. How does the watermelon change the SG and what am I supposed to do about it?
Also, since this is a summer beer and i want it to be quite light (I'll be adding 4 cups of watermelon so it is fruity too), whats the mouth feel and strength like on this beer? I'm usually all for something with lots of hops, but that wasn't my image for this beer.
Thanks so much, hopefully i'll be able to get an update up on this beer when i throw it in my primary.
Brewed this last week as a 1.5 gallon batch. last night i racked it onto 2 cups of juice. shouldn't have started fermentation again, or should i repitch?
Is this normal?
What section of Kroger are you finding this watermelon juice??
Thx. I'm about to keg a wheat I brewed and add about 5 cups of watermelon. Fresh or from Kroger if I can find it. Has anyone here thought of adding some sorbate???? It's used in winemaking to keep fermentation from starting back up if back sweetening a wine.
It would maybe preserve some of the sugars from the watermelon.
Ben -
I brewed up a 5 gallon batch of this using my own extract variation: 3.3lbs wheat LME, 2lbs light DME, 1oz Hallertau for 60 minutes... I let it ferment for a week, then added 5 cups of of squeezed and strained watermelon juice and gave it two more weeks before bottling.
I think next time I'd actually do more watermelon - the flavor is subtle enough that most people have told me "I'm not sure I'd be able to figure out that it was watermelon if you hadn't told me."
thanks for the idea, thread, and methodology!
-KD
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