Meet "Bloody Marion"...So far she's my favorite mistake

Cue Music above:

Check out the color of that beer. This picture was taken the night I first bottled it March 29th. It looked like tomato juice, or a red beer, and that's how Sunny came with the name "Bloody Marion." It's beer, but it's not carbonated yet.

It looks like a Bloody Mary, but it's not tomatoes that give this beer the deep red color. It is Marion berries. I started out trying to make a European wheat beer with a hint of berry flavor. My goal is to eventually make a Huckleberry beer, but those dang Huckleberries are way too expensive to experiment with.

Anyway, I thought that while I was at it, I would start trying to recreate an apple Lager beer that I once fell in in love with. I got all my ingredients peeled, crushed and out on the counter top to begin my brew. I sterilized my equipment and started five gallons of Munich Lager and five gallons of European Wheat Beer.

I accidentally dumped 4 pounds of Macintosh apples into my wheat beer. I was ticked because it's takes a lot of time to peel, core and finely dice 4 pounds of apples, and I had already crushed 2 pounds of Marion berries and I didn't want to re-freeze them because they aren't exactly cheap either. For a moment I though maybe a berried Lager would be nice, but honesty there is no good reason that I have ever found to add a berry flavor to a Lager beer... Apples are one thing, berries are another.

So I went ahead and dumped the berries in the wheat beer with the apples. Now, that has made one strong beer, which I didn't test correctly at the beginning but I suspect it's in the 7% range. I tried that glass in the picture. Uncarbonated, it is kind of like wine. It was very unusual ... but really kind of nice. I tried another glass tonight (half carbonated) and the apples are strong but it's still blending out.

I am really kind of excited to see what this beer does over the next week. You are not supposed to hop a European wheat beer, but I did because apple beer brewers talk about needing to bitter the apple tones with mild hops. I can tell that is working tonight.

If it works out, I will be ready to drink a few in stickman's driveway on April 11th. Even if it doesn't I have a tried and true Munich Lager (unmolested), that will make the visit worth your time anyway.