Fresh Peaches

[burleysean]

Hey everyone,
I've been asked to brew something for a peach festival in our town and was wondering if anyone had some tips for working with peaches. The base is a cream ale, 5%abv 12ibu, 9bbl batch. What we have to work with is 160lbs fresh peaches that we diced and froze, 60lbs Oregon peach puree, and 1 gal peach extract. A lot of different options, but I'd rather use the fresh peaches since they came from the local farmers who are hosting the festival and we have a ton of it. Does anyone have suggestions for dosing/application? The current plan is to add the fruit at the very end of primary and extract if needed in secondary, but having used the extract before there is a definite artificial flavor to it I'd rather avoid. Thanks in advance!
Cheers,
Sean

[Natrat]

Hey,

I'd avoid the extract and puree altogether. I might add puree to the whirlpool, but probably not.

I find I get good peach flavor by macerating the peaches and adding them to the fermenter. If you're using a conical, after you dump yeast the peach chunks tend to act like a filter. They also block your racking arm, so you have to do your transfer from the bottom of the cone.

Adding them to the bright should also work, but I find that carbonating on top of the peach pomace makes a different set of problems. The peach mass floats and makes a mess of your sight tube, PRV, etc. Maybe if you had a huge stainless tea ball...?

One other thing...peaches have a lot of pectin. I use a little pectic enzyme to eliminate that part of the equation.

Good luck! Send me a bottle!

Nat

[Matt Dog]

Nat,
Are you mashing the peaches with the skins or blanching them and peeling first? I want to use some local peaches as well, but blanching and peeling seems like a huge pita! Thanks.

[Natrat]

I used to blanch and peel them, but I don't now. Make sure you remove the pits, though!

I'd probably still do it for a batch of 10 bbl or less, though.

I find that it doesn't make much difference if you're adding them to the fermenter. Strangely, it does seem to make a difference in the bright, but I think that might have to do with force carbonating on top of the peaches/skins. I haven't played with it enough to figure out exactly what is happening. I'm building a distillery right now, and I may get a chance to play with fermenting peaches in the near future...hopefully gaining some experience with stonefruit flavors in alcohols and beer.

And I must add that flavors like peach work best in highly carbonated styles. A peach stout or brown sounds dreadful to me. It's one of the fruits that I can stand in sour beers, too.

Nat

[burleysean]

Do you have a time during fermentation that you prefer to add them? We did a cherry beer where we added our fruit at high krausen and most of the fruit flavor was wiped out when it reached finishing gravity. I was thinking about adding it at the very end of fermentation or right after reaching terminal.

[ChesterBrew]

Hey Sean, definitely add them right at the end of fermentation if you want to maintain the flavor as much as possible. The challenge would be, though, if there's a way to keep the peaches as sterile as possible so you don't possibly introduce a bacterial infection. Of course, if it's going to be consumed quickly, that's less of a problem. Good luck!

[burleysean]

The peaches have been sliced and frozen (skin on) for about a week and a half now. We were playing around with the idea of throwing them in a pizza oven set for 170 degrees for a few minutes to help lower the chance of microbial contamination, anyone know if that would have many adverse effects besides releasing pectins?

[liammckenna]

What about washing them in a mild peracetic acid solution first and dumping the whole thing (peracetic and all) into the primary at end fermentation, rest for 50 hours or so? Heat will free the pectin monster...

Pax.

Liam

[BelgianBrews]

Anyone ever used potassium metabisulfite to reduce contaminants on fruit? I know this is a common practice in making wine, but personally I've never made wine and I've never used potassium metabisulfite.

[liammckenna]

Anyone ever used potassium metabisulfite to reduce contaminants on fruit? I know this is a common practice in making wine, but personally I've never made wine and I've never used potassium metabisulfite.

That would work too. If you hit your fruit mixture with about 150 ppm SO2 and then add the whole mixture (after stirring to distribute) to the main ferment, it should help with any nasty bugs.

pax.

liam

[burleysean]

I like the idea of k meta, how much would you use say per gallon?

[liammckenna]

1 gram per gallon should give you about 150ppm.

Are you talking about a gallon of peaches or water??

If you're talking about peaches, you might be better making a 5% solution of same which is about 2 oz. per quart. you would than use 1 tsp per gallon of fruit.

You can dilute this as necessary (ie. you have a gallon of peaches, you add a gallon of water with a tsp of your 5% solution, mix and dump into your fermentor - you may want to make a "wash" of your fruit with this kind of solution and just dump the fruit.) I wouldn't just use the stock solution on the fruit without diluting it with water. Distribution of the SO2 through the fruit mass would be the my concern.

I would go with peracetic wash myself. I have a personal thing against sulfites. They don't agree with me.

Good luck.

Pax.

Liam