Listening to a podcast with Michael Tonsmeire and my head is swirling with ideas. I got an idea to blend my Nelson Pale Ale with some NZ Sav wine. The beer is currently bottled and still carbing.
If I find that the beer tastes good blended can I blend and re bottle for a short period of time? Will this ruin carbonation?
If you are adding only a small amount of wine that would fit in the headspace, I would let the bottles fully carb then put them in a fridge close to freezing overnight. The next day, I would then add the cold wine to each bottle and then recap. The loss of carbonation would be minimal.
It is MUCH easier to rebrew the base beer and add the wine to secondary, keg, or bottling bucket.
Going from bottle to bulk (carboy, bucket, etc) back to bottle would be a HUGE PITA and most likely result in excessive oxygen pick up.
Re-brewing also allows you to fine-tune your recipe for the wine addition.
Another option is just to blend in the glass. If anything, it will allow you to test out blend volumes and taste before you commit to an entire batch.
Let us know how it turns out! Adding wine (as opposed to wine grapes) is something that is on my to-do list and will (hopefully) be part of my NHC talk this year.
I was going to type out a response but I pretty much everything I was going to say was identical to Kyle’s post.
I really enjoy a little wine flavor in a pale ale. It’s easy to overdo which is why I think it’s a great idea to try blending in the glass rather than locking in a batch in a fermentor or a whole set of bottles before you have the opportunity to taste different blends.