Blending wine & beer???

[Holt]

I was thinking about adding some white wine to a Belgian saison/golden strong type beer just to add more complexity and different flavor components. The beer is ready to transfer to kegs this weekend and I want to try experimenting with one or both of the kegs. I am really liking the flavor of Stone's newest in their vertical epic series--10.10.10

Any suggestions on how much or what type of wine might work for this?

Does anyone have experience blending wine with beer?

[BarefootLion]

Damn talked to someone who did an all Nelson Sauvin IPA and blended with white wine...

I was more concerned with the flavor than the process. He said it turned out good.

[thatguy314]

I think you just have to try to blend flavors.

One of my all-time favorite beers is Captain Lawrence Cuvee de Castleton, which is 20% muscat (got a GABF gold a few years ago). They also do a The Rosso y Marone (also a GABF gold) which I believe blends in merlot. Cantillion does Vingerone with muscat and another one with red wine grapes too I believe. Of course those are all funky beers so they layer a lot of flavors. Stone 10th anniversary also blended juice from wine grapes and had more traditional beer flavors layered (I thought) quite nicely with the wine. I think the trick is to just pick a wine whose fermentation character meshes well with the yeast. I think it's also a question of whether you're adding juice (unfermented) or wine (fermented). If you're adding wine, you also need to consider whether the yeast profile of the wine will work well with the yeast / malt / hop profile of the beer.

But yes, it's possible to make good beer. It's also possible to make bad ones.

I would say it's unethical to enter this into a homebrew competition unless you've fermented the grape juice yourself as well.

[Holt]

I definitely wouldn't enter it in a competition if I blended with a commercial wine, but I would let all the wine drinkers I know just how much I improved the flavor of their favorite grape juice by blending it with homebrew.

So...has anyone done this, and can anyone recommend a wine that might possibly blend well with a WLP500 Belgian golden style homebrew? The brew is already dry (finished at around 1.008) so I was thinking about adding something with a little sweetness. Maybe only 5% or so.

[thatguy314]

I definitely wouldn't enter it in a competition if I blended with a commercial wine, but I would let all the wine drinkers I know just how much I improved the flavor of their favorite grape juice by blending it with homebrew.

So...has anyone done this, and can anyone recommend a wine that might possibly blend well with a WLP500 Belgian golden style homebrew? The brew is already dry (finished at around 1.008) so I was thinking about adding something with a little sweetness. Maybe only 5% or so.

A alsacian-style riesling or gerwurtz might work really nicely. It'll also probably have a fairly similar alcohol content. I tend to find they have similar appley ester notes to the duvel strain.

[Steelers&Beer]

here's kind of a different way that i did this...

made 10 gal of the blonde ale recipe from BCS. With one carboy, I added a kilo of dissolved jaggery when fermentation was just about done. I added a packet of Moncherot(or the red packet with the star on it) wine yeast. kegged when done. Took it to a xmas party last year and it was the first to go.

[alanzo]

I like to add a bottle of sweet-ish red wine to 5 gallons of berliner weiss. Bumps up the alchohol and sweetens.

[straight cash homey]

swedish people are making wine now, i though they just produced blonde haired beauties.
the one on the right wants me so bad.