Beet Beer

What is it about beets? Some people find them a magical delight, Tom Robbins would agree as the root vegetable served as his muse for Jitterbug Perfume. Others, who likely have only had pickled beets from a can, treat them like Southern Comfort after a bad experience at the homecoming dance. In my opinion, beets are one of the great treasures of the garden.

It is getting near the end of the growing season even in the greenhouse with 12'' of snow last night (Oct. 25) and I recently picked the last of the beets deciding to try them in a beer. I have heard of beet beers from Magic Hat, O'dells, and New Belgium among others, but have never tried any of them so I am shooting blind here, which makes it more fun.

I knew I wanted to add beets multiple ways and at different times in the process and I settled on juicing some of the beets fresh and adding the pure beet juice to secondary while roasting some of the beets and adding them to the boil. I don't think I have enough beets to make a proper 5g batch and I am not certain I would like drinking 5 gallons of beet beer, so I went with a 3 gallon recipe as I recently did for tomato beer.



Juicing Beets



Beet Beer Recipe:

Specifics:

Anticipated OG 1.056

Anticipated TG 1.014

SRM 10.58

IBU 44.2

3 gallon batch

60 minute boil

Batch sparge

Grain:

5 lbs. 2-Row

.5 lbs. Vienna

.25 lbs. Oat Malt

.25 lbs. Golden Naked Oats

.25 lbs. Melanoidin

.15 lbs. Caramel 60L

Hops:

.5 oz Northern Brewer at 60 minutes

.5 oz Centennial at 15 minutes (these were fairly aged)

1 oz Hersbrucker at 5 minutes

Yeast:

Safbrew T-58

Extras:

2 lbs. of roasted beets to boil

1 g Corriander (crushed) at 5 minutes

24 oz fresh beet juice to secondary

Notes: Brewed on 10/28/11 by myself.

Drew 4.5 gallons of preboil wort and cooked down to just under 3 gallons. Cooled to 70 and pitched yeast.

11/2/11 Transferred to secondary, adding 24 oz of fresh beet juice. No discernible beet presence from beets in boil. Counting on juice for all beet character. The juice stained the batch a deep red immediately.

11/16/11--Bottled with 1/2 cup cane sugar