Group effort recipe

jeffpn

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At the ballgame the other night, my wife had a beer she really liked, and I've been charged with making her 5 gallons of it. It's by a brewery in Cincinnati, called Rhinegeist. It's called Bubbles, and sold as a rosé ale. (It used to be brewed as a cider, but now it's brewed as an ale.) It's pretty much a wine cooler. Note the 0 IBU. I tried similar recipe before. I brewed it as an extract, and it had 4 lbs DME, 4 lbs corn syrup, and 1 lb maltodextrin. The unflavored fermented result tasted very much like Countrytime lemonade. I think it was a good base. I was shooting for 1.059, but my notes say I got 1.076 with a 6 gallon kettle batch size. I didn't note my ending kettle volume. Brewer's Best sells apple, cranberry, and peach flavorings. Those bottles are usually good for a 5 gallon batch size, so I figure a third of a bottle of each of the three flavors. I remember my last attempt didn't taste sweet like a wine cooler does. I see on the Brewer's Best site that they sell cider kits that include a sweeetener. It goes in pre fermentation. Is that something I can get a la carte? I've never heard of it. I'd love to hear some input on this, except why I shouldn't brew it. My wife wants it, and I am going to brew it. Part of my deal with her to build the 6 tap keezer!

http://www.rhinegeist.com/ciders
 
if you want sweet don't use sugar or corn syrup, those will get eaten by the yeast almost 100% so no sweetness will come through
 
I get that. I was doing a bit of research, and it seems like artificial might be the way to go. I'm wondering what's in the sweetener packet in those cider kits.
 
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Or just add the small 4 oz bottle of extract flavoring that you can get from brewers friend to your keg after fermentation is complete

I'm planning a watermelon ale I'm going to add .25 grams of watermelon extract per litre in my serving keg im getting from brewers friend also.
 
There are a few ways to go about this - we make wine, too. The easiest way I can thnk of is to find an Island Mist wine kit or something similar and make the wine cooler. We make semi-sweet wines by stopping the fermentation. To stop, simply chill the most below the yeast's minimum operating temperature. It'll flocculate out. Next step is to rack the wine off the lees, the yeast, and stirr the living crap out of it to degas. Next step is to add potassium metabisulfite to kill the remaining yeast and potassiium sorbate to stabilize the wine. Sugar is not a problem any longer as the wine has no more live yeast to ferment it. Let it stand for a couple weeks, then fine with isinglass or gelatine or buy a Super-Kleer kit. Once it's clear, bottle it. That should get you what you want with the added bonus, you can stop the fermentation when you like or ferment it all the way through, add sugar to desired sweetness, then use the meta and sorbate.

There are calculators online to help you determine how much meta and how much sorbate to use. For the life of me, I don't remember where they are. A quick search should help you find it.
 
I bought this product years ago from brew shop in Darwin to back sweeten my ginger beer called sodium saccharin it does have a slight metallic flavour i think. I remember opting for lactose in the end.

That stuff is super sweet i only needed a teaspoon to sweeten my entire batch!
 
To be clear, the product is an ale, it's not a wine. That's how I want to brew it. I believe just about every wine cooler these days is a malt beverage. I'll use a very pale malt, maybe a pilsner. I might throw some corn syrup as well. It's the sweetness that has me wondering. I've seen some artificial sweeteners mentioned in other articles, like saccharine and Splenda mentioned here.
 
To be clear, the product is an ale, it's not a wine. That's how I want to brew it. I believe just about every wine cooler these days is a malt beverage. I'll use a very pale malt, maybe a pilsner. I might throw some corn syrup as well. It's the sweetness that has me wondering. I've seen some artificial sweeteners mentioned in other articles, like saccharine and Splenda mentioned here.
My point is if you can stop fermentation and stabilize the beverage, you can keep the sugar you have, add more sugar back and still have a shelf-stable product. Meta kills yeast and sorbate keeps any left over from starting back up. You can sweeten with any pasteurized sugar you'd like and won't have to deal with the aftertaste of the artificial sweeteners. I've used them, they're horrible in malt beverages. I'm using wine as an example but the process and chemicals to stabilize a sweet beverage are the same. Example: Leinenkugel's Summer Shandy.
 
After talking to the brew store guy, I pulled the trigger. He said the recipe has apple cider in it. So I bought the Brewer's Best Cranberry Apple Cider kit. I'll add some peach flavoring, and add DME instead of corn sugar. Whatever it tastes like, I think my wife will like it.
 
After talking to the brew store guy, I pulled the trigger. He said the recipe has apple cider in it. So I bought the Brewer's Best Cranberry Apple Cider kit. I'll add some peach flavoring, and add DME instead of corn sugar. Whatever it tastes like, I think my wife will like it.
You can always back-sweeten it with sugar or juice, then stop and stabilize.
 
I've made exactly one cider kit so take this for what it's worth: That sweetener/flavor packet that came with the kit smelled and tasted like a green apple Jolly Rancher. I wouldn't use it and ended up with a dry cider that pretty much tasted like Scrappy Apple Dry. If I were doing another cider and wanted sweetness and flavor, I'd use a can of frozen apple juice concentrate or, in the case of the kit you are using, some cranberry juice then stop and stabilize as if I were doing a semi-sweet or sweet wine. I've tried Stevia and Saccharine in beers - the result is very nasty.

I like your approach and think you'll come out with a great beverage, I'd just be very cautious with the "flavor packets" and artificial sweeteners.
 
Typically what I do with new products is follow the instructions, and make adjustments the second time. So what's probably going to happen is that I'll use the included sweetener packet, and then kick myself for not listening to you. I am intrigued by the stabilization process you mention.
 
Quickest brew day ever. Maybe I'll even brew later today. I have an empty fermenter, as I used my old bucket for this. A word of caution to those who may buy a Brewer's Best cider kit: when you open the kit, you have to brew. I see no way to open it just to see what's inside. There is a built in inner liner that has the concentrate in it. The packets and instructions are tucked between it and the outer bag. When you cut the top off, you also open the inner liner.
 

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You can see how full my bucket is. The cider kit is a 6 gallon kit, like many wine recipes, I guess. My gravity is 1.052. The kit says 41-44 for gravity. If mine ferments down to 1.005, it'll be 6.17% ABV, very close to the 6.2% the real Bubbles has. Instead of shaking the bucket after pitching the yeast, I stirred it, due to the lack of headspace. 10 hours later, I'm not seeing activity yet. I have a blowoff tube set up. I'm sure I'm going to need it!
 
I did a Mangrove Jacks apple cider kit and the destructions said to add the sweetener according to taste. I only used about half the pack and it was yummy. Hope the boss likes what you brew. Sounds like a fun brew.
 
I consulted with my wife when I added the sweetener pack. I told her the instructions included adding none to half to the whole pack. She wanted to know why it only included one pack!
 
After two days of bubbles in my blowoff tube settup, it stopped bubbling. Today I checked the gravity, expecting it to have stalled. Sure enough. Supposed to finish at 1.004. It's at 1.022. I stirred it up, trying to splash, but it's pretty full. I don't want to make a mess. I'm not doing anything with it until Monday. If the gravity is still too high, I'll put some more cider yeast in it. The temp was somewhere around 78-80° when I pitched it. Maybe I scalded some of the yeast. We'll see what happens.
 

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