I’m just getting into homebrew… literally just ordered my first kit from Northern Brewer today. With my non-stop research, the wife is getting into it as well and wants to know if I can homebrew her Verdi Spumante.
Looking to get any recommendations you all might have on whether something like this is feasible. Its a fruity, sweet, carbonated beverage - described everywhere as in truth a malt beverage. Thanks!
That’s a tough one. I’ve never been able to find any sort of hint as to what makes up the recipe, other than the fact that it’s a “sparkling malt beverage”. You might look into Belgian strong ales as a starting point; some of these can be very fruity and sweet. Delirium Tremens, for example, tastes very close to champagne (to me anyway).
This would not be an easy task and you will always have a “malty”/beer taste as they remove most all solids to obtain a clear base. I would actually say skip the “fake” spumante like verdi and “brew” a base wine such as muscat/muscato grapes and add residual sugar at botting to make a “true” spumante. You will definitely want to use heavier bottles and corks/cages as “asti/spumante” is usually carbed to around 4 volumes which is way too much for regular crown capped bottles.
Or even simpler if you have a keg system, dump the finished wine in the keg and let er rip.
It may not be possible to always find a muscato kit or grapes. You could sub another grape like Riesling and you will have very similar aroma/flavor profile to muscat.
That’s a great point… Why try to copy the cheap fake instead of shooting for the real thing. I’ve seen one or two moscato kits. Wonder if I can brew that extra sweet to satisfy the wife’s taste there…
This stuff and a lot of other popular “malt beverages” don’t use malt because they want the malt flavor and body - in fact they go to great lengths to remove it. Instead they do it because it is classified differently under tax and liquor laws. This includes not only this stuff, but other things like Mike’s hard lemonade, smirnoff ice, twisted tea, etc. For a home brewer, using malt to make this kind of drink is both difficult and pointless.
Either make a real wine, or mix some watered down grape juice with vodka and force carb it. Likewise, if you want hard lemonade or tea, make drink, add vodka. Much easier.
Likewise, if you want hard lemonade or tea, make drink, add vodka. Much easier.