Beer-Wine Hybrids
Photo courtesy of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery
America’s ever-innovative craft brewers are at it again, finding new ways to push the envelope on beer styles. A current trend, which actually has its roots in the 90s, is the creation of beer/wine hybrids. Fruity and tart, with grape notes and a good dose of funk, these beers are often aged in used wine barrels for an extra touch of oak. Predictably, these crossover beers appeal to both craft beer enthusiasts and wine drinkers.
More and more craft brewers — and homebrewers — are experimenting with the union of grape and grain. Aging beers in old wine barrels adds a desirable wine character without actually adding grapes or juice. Even if you don’t have an oak barrel, homebrewers can achieve close approximations of these beers using other techniques, including fermenting with wine yeast, adding grapes directly to the mash, and introducing grapejuice or must (freshly pressed grapejuice containing the skins, seeds, and stems) to the beer in progress.
More wine-infused than 50-50 blends, these hybrids use traditional beers — often Belgian styles — as a base. Hops may be used, although herbs and spices can also serve as substitutes. The Brettanomyces, or “Brett,” yeast strain, which in brewing is most often found in lambic beers, is a typical choice for fermentation. When using Brett, which is known for its leisurely fermentations, beer can take months, even years, to break down sugars and form the characteristic funky, musty, horsey qualities associated with lambics. Patience is a must.
For the truly adventurous, beer-wine hybrids can also be made with Pediococcus and Lactobacillus, lactic acid bacteria that produce the sour flavor typical of Berliner weiss, sour brown ale and gueuze. A word of caution — when inviting these bugs into the brewery, it’s important to practice excellent sanitation procedures in order to avoid unintentional contamination of other beers.
Hybrid Trailblazers
A lot of credit for the current interest in the style goes to Sam Calagione and Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Milton, Delaware. Calagione is one of the first American brewers recognized for developing — or rather resurrecting — a unique hybrid beer back in 1999 with Midas Touch. Calagione’s first “ancient ale,” Midas Touch is a cross between wine, mead and beer and was formulated based on molecular evidence found in a Turkish tomb believed to have belonged to King Midas. Residue found in a 2,700-year-old drinking vessel became the basis of the sweet, dry beer made with honey, white Muscat grapes and saffron. (Brew a clone of Midas Touch and learn more about Calagione’s ancient experiments at https://byo.com/story1537)
Another brewery that has been on the forefront of this style is Russian River Brewing Company in Santa Rosa, California, which has also been employing the wine-barrel-aging method since the 1990s. With a family background in winemaking, Co-owner and Brewmaster Vinnie Cilurzo satisfied his affinity for sour, barrel-aged Belgian beer by creating his own versions, including a sour beer aged in wine barrels called Temptation.Temptation (1.062 OG, 7.5% ABV) is a highly sour blonde ale aged in used Chardonnay barrels from Sonoma County wineries. It is aged for about nine to fifteen months (depending on the age of the barrel) with Brettanomyces, Lactobacillus, and Pediococcus. The beer is medium-bodied with hints of oak and Chardonnay, and the trademark funky, flavorful Brett character.
Temptation was the first hybrid made by Russian River, said Cilurzo, although it has evolved and been tweaked over the years. “The idea was that I wanted to take my favorite part of a lambic — Brett — and incorporate it into a barrel beer. Over time we worked bacteria into the beer,” he said. He notes that at the time, Russian River was one of the few US breweries experimenting with the style and so there was no market for the beers . . . at first. That soon changed, however. “It really is amazing to see how far along these beers have come with the consumer,” said Cilurzo, adding that Russian River now sells more than eight and a half barrels of Temptation each week at its brewpub. “I don’t think you can pin down any one type of consumer; not only do beer enthusiasts drink these beers, but it’s wine drinkers as well, and we see a lot of them being in the middle of wine country,” he said.
In October 2010, Stone Brewing Co. in Escondido, California introduced 10.10.10 Vertical Epic Ale, a one-time release. The Belgian strong golden ale was brewed with chamomile, and a blend of white wine grape juice — Muscat Canelli, Gewürztraminer, Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc — was added during fermentation. Brewmaster Mitch Steele said 10.10.10 immediately appealed to Stone Brewing Co.’s fans, many of whom simply liked the brewery’s experimental approach and were curious to try the results. “I think one of the most interesting things about this beer is that it has aged beautifully,” says Steele. “The wine character was a little disjointed when we first released the beer, but it has integrated wonderfully with the beer flavors as the beer has aged. People who enjoy nice wine should enjoy this beer also.”
The trend in barrel-aged hybrids has also found its way to the East Coast. Brewer/Owner Scott Vaccaro of Captain Lawrence Brewing Company in Elmsford, New York says the first true wine/beer hybrid made at the brewery was first brewed in 2006, released in 2007, and was the first gold medal winner in the American Sour Ale category at the Great American Beer Festival (GABF). Cuvee de Castleton is a golden ale aged in oak with Brett and Muscat grapes. The beer is aged for about 14 months in the oak, resulting in a tart, fruity and complex beer with a strong wine-like character. Since then, Vaccaro has followed up with several other related beers, including Rosso e Marrone, a strong brown ale also fermented with Brett, Merlot and Zinfandel grapes and aged in oak barrels. In 2009, Rosso e Marrone (Red and Brown) also took a gold medal for American Style Sour Ale at the GABF. For obvious reasons, Vaccaro is a big fan of the style. “I love the wide variety of flavors you can get from using different grape varieties and different base beers,” he says.
Hybrid Challenges
Creating these complex beers is not without its challenges. Steele explained that grapes are covered with wild yeast, including Brett. Typically, winemakers add the preservative sulfur dioxide (SO2) during the crushing process to eliminate the wild yeast activity, but he noted that Stone Brewing Co. skipped that step to avoid adding sulfur to the beer. This method presented a number of challenges, such as keeping the unsulfured juice at near-freezing temperatures to keep the wild yeast from fermenting. “Once we received the juice at the brewery, we had to be very diligent in our sanitation, and isolating this beer from the rest of our other beers,” said Steele. “The brewer’s yeast did overcome any wild yeast during fermentation, but we still used specially selected hoses and fittings when we worked on the beer.”
Steele also explained that grape juice is loaded with fructose, which can cause problems with fermentation. Brewer’s yeast will take up simple sugars like glucose and fructose first, then have to adapt its cell structure to start taking up maltose, which is the majority of the type of sugar found in wort. An abundance of simple sugar in the wort at the start of fermentation can make it difficult for the yeast to metabolize maltose, resulting in a stalled fermentation.
“That’s why we added the juice late in the fermentation process, so the yeast was already successfully metabolizing the maltose,” said Steele.
Then there’s the element of unpredictability. But the experimental nature of brewing these beers due to the aging and blending aspects, the wide range of flavor characteristics, and not knowing exactly what the result will be is the attraction to many brewers. Cilurzo said he loves the unknown component of the process. “It is not like a regular beer where you can predict the outcome in X number of days. With these beers, the beer really tells the brewer when it is ready,’’ he said.
“I like the blending aspect of these beers; we have so many different things going we have a lot to play with to blend to a certain flavor or characteristic. I also love how these beers change over time — we bottle condition all our funky beer so once in the bottle we will hold it about eight weeks before releasing them. Although they taste great at release, just like a wine it will change and get better. In my book I feel like the flavors really come together at six to twelve months,” Cilurzo said. Steele concurs. “I’m a former winemaker, and still enjoy wine. I like this style because it adds elements of both, dealing with grapes, and harvest schedules adds an interesting twist to scheduling the brewing. I just like it when flavors and ingredients that one wouldn’t commonly put together work so well. The synergy is great,’” he says.
Another challenge for brewers is the lengthy aging process. “One of the biggest challenges for brewers is simply patience. Brewers are not used to holding a beer for this long, so not tasting it every week or looking at it often is a hard thing for a brewer to deal with,” Vinnie said.
Tips for Success
If the somewhat daring and unpredictable nature of the hybrid style appeals to you as a homebrewer, the pros I talked to offer some advice for making this style. First and foremost, when making a beer-wine hybrid, the pros recommend choosing your style wisely. Base beers that best lend themselves to this style should not be overly aggressive or hop forward. Steele recommends Belgian styles, which tend to have a stronger yeast character, while Cilurzo says a blonde ale, saison or brown ale is a good bet. Vaccaro recommends styles that lend themselves to Brett fermentation, as they make a great complement to the flavors created by the use of wine grapes in beer.
“We use the entire grape — seeds, skins and all,” said Vaccaro. Make sure if you are going to do that you use a fermenter that allows you to get the beer out and leave the grapes behind. Also don’t start with a base beer that is overly aggressive. It will not allow the flavors to come together.” Vinnie Cilurzo also stresses the importance of choosing the right base beer for this hybrid style and advises homebrewers to heed the importance of temperatures.
“I believe a brewer should brew a specific recipe for their barrel beer,” he says. “You can really hurt your beer if you store it too warm; we keep our barrels at 58–62 °F (14–17 °C). Temperature is a big deal, like I said earlier, and most brewers either pro or amateur don’t have the proper temperature controlled room.”
Photo courtesy of Captain Lawrence Brewing
Many beer-wine hybrids are brewed and/or aged in oak barrels that were used for making wine, such as this barrel of Cuvee de Castleton from Captain Lawrence Brewing Co.
Stone Brewing Co. 10.10.10 Vertical Epic Ale clone
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.069 FG = 1.003
IBU = 45 SRM = 12 ABV = 9.3%
Make sure to compensate for the extra volume of grapes or grape juice you will be adding to the primary fermenter. This recipe was designed so that at the end of brew day your fermenter only contains 4.5 gallons (17 L) of wort. The original gravity is calculated without the grape juice while the ABV is calculated with grape juice.
Ingredients
10 lbs. (4.5 kg) 2-row pale malt
1.4 lbs. (0.64 kg) flaked triticale (can substitute flaked rye and/or flaked wheat)
1.15 lbs. (0.52 kg) liquid amber candi sugar (90 min.)
0.8 oz. (22 g) dried whole chamomile flowers (0 min.)
2 qts. (1.9 L) white wine grape juice OR 6–7 lbs. (2.7–3.2 kg) crushed white wine grapes (primary fermentation)
11 AAU Perle hops (90 min.) (1.1 oz./31 g at 10% alpha acid)
Wyeast 3522 (Belgian Ardennes) or White Labs WLP550 (Belgian Ale) yeast
Priming sugar (if bottling)
Step by Step
This is a single infusion mash, with a conversion rest at 148 °F (64 °C) for 105 minutes. This helps provide a fermentable wort. Raise the mash temperature to 165 °F (74 °C) after conversion rest to stop the enzymatic conversion of starches to sugars before lautering. Recirculate your wort gently for 5-15 minutes, depending on your system, before diverting wort flow to your kettle/boiling vessel. If you have a refractometer, check your “first wort” (unsparged wort) gravity, it should be about 1.088–1.092 SG. Sparge water should be between 165 and 170 °F (74 and 77 °C) to maximize extraction, but avoid going over 170 °F (77 °C) or you’ll extract harsh compounds from the malt husks. Sparge until you hit your target boil volume or until your wort gravity being drawn-off reaches 1.012 SG, whichever comes first. Don’t lauter past this gravity, because when the sparged wort coming off the lauter is that low in sugar content, you risk extracting tannins and other harsh character from the malt husks.
Add all the hops at the start of boil. Stone typically boils their wort for 90 minutes to get about 8–10% evaporation. Depending on your boil parameters, you may want or need to add some portion of the hops before the boil actually starts (first wort hopping) to keep the foaming under control. Add the amber candi sugar after the boil starts so the sugar can’t settle on the bottom of the kettle and scorch as the heat increases.
After the wort boil is complete, add the chamomile flowers (in a muslin brew bag) to maximize flavor extraction. Chill the wort using an immersion chiller or a heat exchanger to about 65–70 °F (18–21 °C). Pitch enough yeast to get 20-25 million cells per milliliter (requires a starter). Stone uses the Wyeast 3522 Belgian Ardennes strain, because it doesn’t produce a lot of phenolic clove flavors and ferments strongly to dryness. Stone used a fairly high pitching rate here, because they wanted to ferment at a lower temperature but still ensure the beer fermented out completely.
Ferment at 72 °F (22 °C) to maximize fruity ester formation and reduce the clove/spicy flavor formations, which form at higher levels with warmer Belgian yeast fermentation temperatures, above ~75 °F (24 °C). At 1.040 SG (about halfway through primary fermentation) add the grape juice. Use unsulfited juice to ensure fermentation will proceed, and add the juice at the height of the beer fermentation. Stone reports that their juice was approximately 35% Gewürztraminer, 30% Muscat Canelli, 20% Sauvignon Blanc and 15% Riesling, but any Muscat variety or blend would work. After fermentation is complete, chill the beer down to about 35 °F (2 °C) or so, and let it sit until the beer clarifies, at least one week. Bottle or keg the beer as normal. The 10.10.10 Vertical Epic Ale clone will be wonderful fresh, but the wine flavors should develop further over time.
Stone Brewing Co. 10.10.10 Vertical Epic Ale clone
(5 gallons/19 L, partial mash)
OG = 1.069 FG = 1.003
IBU = 45 SRM = 4 ABV = 9.3%
Ingredients
3.3 lbs. (1.5 kg) pale unhopped liquid malt extract
1.8 lbs. (0.82 kg) light dried malt extract
1.5 lbs. (0.68 kg) 2-row pale malt
1.4 lbs. (0.64 kg) flaked triticale (can substitute flaked rye and/or flaked wheat)
1.15 lbs. (0.52 kg) liquid amber candi sugar (90 min.)
0.8 oz. (22 g) dried whole chamomile flowers (0 min.)
2 qts. (1.9 L) white wine grape juice OR 6–7 lbs (2.7–3.2 kg) crushed white wine grapes (primary fermentation)
11 AAU Perle hops (90 min.) (1.1 oz./31 g at 10% alpha acid)
Wyeast 3522 (Belgian Ardennes) or White Labs WLP550 (Belgian Ale) yeast
Priming sugar (if bottling)
Step by Step
Heat 6 qts. (5.7 L) strike water to achieve a mash temperature of 148 °F (64 °C). Add the crushed pale malt and flaked triticale to a muslin bag. Let the grains rest in the strike water for 45–60 minutes. Remove the grain bag and wash with 4 qts. (3.8 L) hot water. Top off your kettle to at least 3 gallons. Bring to a boil and follow the directions per the all-grain recipe.
Russian River Brewing Co. Temptation clone
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.062 FG = 1.012
(going into the barrel)
IBU = 28 SRM = 4 ABV = 6.8%
ABV and final gravity are both based on the beer going into the barrel/secondary fermenter, prior to the souring process. “None of our barrel beers are easy to replicate on a homebrew level as we are matching specific recipes with specific types of wine barrels. For example Temptation is aged in Chardonnay barrels exclusively. One suggestion for a homebrewer is to add a little bit of Chardonnay into the beer to get the wine character since they cannot get it from the wood like we do.”
– Vinnie Cilurzo
Ingredients
11.5 lbs. (5.2 kg) 2-row pale malt
10 oz. (0.27 kg) acidulated malt
14 oz. (0.41 kg) dextrine malt
6.0 AAU Warrior® hops (90 min.) (0.4 oz./11 g of 15.0% alpha acids)
1.8 AAU Styrian Goldings hops (30 min.) (0.4 oz./11 g of 4.5% alpha acids)
1.4 AAU Styrian Goldings hops (0 min.) (0.3 oz./8.5 g of 4.5% alpha acids)
White Labs WLP530 (Abbey Ale) or Wyeast 1214 (Belgian Abbey Ale) yeast
Wyeast 5112 (Brettanomyces bruxellensis) or White Labs WLP650 (Brettanomyces bruxellensis) yeast
Wyeast 5335 (Lactobacillus) or White Labs WLP677 (Lactobacillus) bacteria or
Wyeast 5733 (Pediococcus) bacteria
Oak barrel, staves, beans or chips
Chardonnay (optional)
1 cup corn sugar (for priming)
Step by Step
Mash at 158 °F (70 °C). Boil for 90 minutes, adding hops at times indicated. Begin fementation at 68 °F
(20 °C) and free rise to 76 °F (24 °C). After primary fermentation, drop as much of the yeast out as possible and move beer to wine barrel or secondary fermenter (with oak alternative) where Brettanomyces is added. After eight to twelve weeks of aging with the Brett, add bacteria to beer and top barrel/fermenter with a neutral base beer or Chardonnay. From here the beer will sit for another six to nine months. After the barrel aging is complete bottle condition the beer using a wine yeast and an appropriate quantity of priming sugar to meet your desired CO2 level. High pressure-rated barrels are strongly suggested.
Russian River Brewing Co. Temptation clone
(5 gallons/19 L, extract only)
OG = 1.062 FG = 1.012
(going into the barrel)
IBU = 28 SRM = 4 ABV = 6.8%
Ingredients
6.6 lbs. (3 kg) light liquid malt extract
1.75 lbs. (0.8 kg) light dried malt extract
0.25 oz. (8 ml) 88% lactic acid
6.0 AAU Warrior® hops (90 min) (0.4 oz./11 g of 15.0% alpha acids)
1.8 AAU Styrian Goldings hops (30 min ) (0.4 oz./11 g of 4.5% alpha acids)
1.4 AAU Styrian Goldings hops (0 min) (0.3 oz./8.5 g of 4.5% alpha acids)
White Labs WLP530 (Abbey Ale) or Wyeast 1214 (Belgian Abbey Ale) yeast
Wyeast 5112 (Brettanomyces bruxellensis) or White Labs WLP650 (Brettanomyces bruxellensis) yeast
Wyeast 5335 (Lactobacillus) or White Labs WLP677 (Lactobacillus) bacteria
Wyeast 5733 (Pediococcus) bacteria
Oak barrel, staves, beans or chips
Chardonnay (optional)
1 cup corn sugar (for priming)
Step by Step
Add 5 gallons (19 L) water, extract and lactic acid to the kettle being sure to add the liquid malt extract off heat to avoid scorching the clumped extract. Follow the instruction for the boil and fermentation (aging) schedule from the all-grain recipe.
Photo courtesy of Captain Lawrence Brewing Co.
