Brewing with fresh fruits

[Øl-sheik]

We got an order in for a fruit beer with fresh sallow thorn berries, sitting in my freezer right now.

Well I wonder what the best point of adding the berries to the process is. I will aswell work with juice, since I have to little of the berries. Is it maybe advisable to process the berries in any way before addition? The base beer will also contain rose hip and will be a Belguim Strong Ale (6 % ABV).

Thanks for any helpful input!

[Michael Murphy]

Hey Christoph... Usually fruits are best to add after primary fermentation. depending on how you want the beer to taste. The fermentation will scrub off most delicate flavors from the fruit.

The problem with using certain fruits is getting it back out of the fermenter, this is where others can help you with theri experience. Id add the berries to a flat bottomed tank just after fermentation and blend the green beer in with the fruit. At this piont allow the beer and fruit to sit for a week or 2 at temp, then cool the beer down and allow the fruit to settle down to the bottom. If you can add a stand pipe to your flat bottom tank that would help you a lot later when you want it out.

Also the fruits can cause the beer to sour, sometimes thats a good thing, if you dont want this you can use the mash tun and try to pasteurize the fruit prior to adding it to the tank. I think it may be easier to deal with if the fruit was divided up into small plastic bags while soaking in the hot water. Pasteurizing will also help to burst the cells of the fruit so it leeches into the beer faster.

Then you may have to use a screen in tube filter to get the beer out of the tank, you will still have a bit of a mess to clean up once your finished.

[Fred Scheer]

HI Christopher:

Keep the fruit frozen and add after primary fermentation.
Add the frozen fruit right into your tank before transfer.
Keep an eye on your pH.
Hope this helps

Fred

[JoeV]

Since you dont have many of the fresh berries I would make a pie. Then go and get some aseptic juice or aseptic puree. For large scale its really much easier to deal with than whole fruits. In a 15bbl batch of our mango wiess we use 55 galons of mango puree. Thats a lot of mangos, I cant imagine processing them all myself. You can add aseptic product to the fermenter without pasteurization and not worry about the beer going sour. Another benefit is the juice and puree will have a standardized brix range, acidity, color and so on. Ohh yea and one last tip on using fruit, if its a high pectin fruit and you dont want a cloudy finished product you need to add pectinase enzyme.

[mic_mac]

Since you dont have many of the fresh berries I would make a pie. Then go and get some aseptic juice or aseptic puree.

I know this isn't the sort of site where people write "LOL" but thanks for that - it tickled me.
cheers
MikeMcG
www.betwixt.co.uk