Wondering if someone here on the wine part of the forum can chime in and help me out. I'm playing around trying to come up with a workable hybrid beer/wine recipe based a little loosely on DFH's Noble Rot. Below is the recipe from BeerSmith that I worked on today a bit (just noticed the efficiencies look screwy I get 70-75% typically)



Anyway right now, I'm guessing that 22 Brix is about the range of the "typical" sugar percentage in Viognier, Pinot Gris, and Muscat - does that sound right? I'm trying to fine tune my recipe in beersmith and figure out how much of a given juice I'll have to add to the wort to get me where I need to be for the fermentables. My plan is to add the juice during flameout/whirlpool so I don't concentrate it but I still kill off things in there. I'm know the Brix varies on season, botrytis, etc. but does 22 seem like a good rough number to start planning with? I've tried some searches but nothing is jumping out at me.



Like DFH, I'm shooting for 50% of my fermentables from the grains (German Pilsner and some White Wheat) and 50% from the juice (Viognier with probably a Pinot or maybe a Muscat variety - still debating - the hops have the potential to give some citrus to the flavor profile but that may just get blown away by the grapes anyway) The Wyeast 3711 French Saison yeast that I was thinking of using tolerates up to 12% alcohol and attenuation is 77-83%



Oh, any thoughts on whether I have to treat this hybrid wine/beer like I would a Cider and avoid surface contact with oxygen (e.g. I fill the Carboys "all the way up" for fermentation and avoid oxygen in transfers by pushing with CO2?)





Right now the biggest issue I'd like to figure out is the fermentables that I'll get from adding the unfermented grape juice. I can measure the Brix with a refractometer and that will give me a rough percentage by weight but I'm just not sure I have a handle on this. So.. in the recipe below I'm using what I believe is the approximate sugar from 2 gallons of juice at 22 Brix and inputing it in beersmith as Sucrose (which is probably the completely wrong way to do this) So, basically I'm thinking I make a batch using the ingredients below so that post-boil I'm at 4 gallons of wort, then I add 2 gallons of must at flameout, cool the batch and ferment. Thoughts?



(I'll make a big starter too, and the liquid oak amount still needs to be worked out based on what I use but it will be one of the Vanilla types)



Recipe: Noble Rot Clone

Brewer:

Asst Brewer:

Style: Fruit Beer? - Wine/Beer Hybrid

TYPE: All Grain

Taste: (30.0)



Recipe Specifications

--------------------------

Boil Size: 8.81 gal

Post Boil Volume: 7.02 gal

Batch Size (fermenter): 6.00 gal

Bottling Volume: 5.55 gal

Estimated OG: 1.073 SG

Estimated Color: 3.6 SRM

Estimated IBU: 31.8 IBUs

Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.00 %

Est Mash Efficiency: 89.4 %

Boil Time: 60 Minutes



Ingredients:

------------

Amt Name Type # %/IBU

9 lbs 4.0 oz Pilsner (2 Row) Bel (2.0 SRM) Grain 1 66.8 %

1 lbs 4.0 oz Wheat Malt, Bel (2.0 SRM) Grain 2 9.0 %

1.0 pkg French Saison (Wyeast Labs #3711) [50.28 Yeast 9 -

0.75 oz Sorachi Ace [12.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 4 23.9 IBUs

0.50 oz Citra [12.00 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 5 7.9 IBUs

0.50 oz Citra [12.00 %] - Aroma Steep 0.0 min Hop 6 0.0 IBUs

0.50 oz Sorachi Ace [12.00 %] - Aroma Steep 0.0 Hop 7 0.0 IBUs

1.00 oz Citra [12.00 %] - Dry Hop 10.0 Days Hop 10 0.0 IBUs

1.00 oz Sterling [7.50 %] - Dry Hop 10.0 Days Hop 11 0.0 IBUs

0.50 oz Sterling [7.50 %] - Aroma Steep 15.0 min Hop 8 0.0 IBUs

3 lbs 5.4 oz Sugar, Table (Sucrose) (1.0 SRM) Sugar 3 24.1 %

2.40 oz Oak Essence (Liquid) (Bottling 5.0 mins) Flavor 12 -