I’m going to brew a blueberry beer at the request of my brother. He specifically does not like wheat beers, so I’ll be using NB’s Cream Ale as the base beer. I know I’ll need to rack to secondary to use the fruit, and I’ll be using 5 pounds of fresh (I’ve frozen them) berries.
My questions: Do I need to sanitize the berries (soak in star-san)? and Should I put them into the fermenter whole or puree them first?
Any other suggestions or advice would be appreciated as well!
Thanks!
:cheers:
I would not worry about trying to sanitize the berries at all. Once you rack your beer into secondary just make sure that the container the berries are in is sanitized and also your funnel, if you are planning on using one, is sanitized. One trick you could do is to put the berries into a cooking pot with a little bit of water and to cook them down a bit. Basically its a way to heat sterilize them. The only thing is that you would need to cover them after they have been heated to boiling temp so that when they cool, no contaminates get into the berries. Otherwise, if you dont want to go through the hassle of cooking them…id say just dump them in and let them do their magic! My friend and I have made pumpkin spice ales with real, fresh pumpkin and have not had any problem with infection. The only thing you are going to notice is that your beer may start to ferment a little in secondary, however that is just from the sugars in the fruit.
I hope this helps!!
[quote=“bavarianbrewmaster1”]I would not worry about trying to sanitize the berries at all. Once you rack your beer into secondary just make sure that the container the berries are in is sanitized and also your funnel, if you are planning on using one, is sanitized. One trick you could do is to put the berries into a cooking pot with a little bit of water and to cook them down a bit. Basically its a way to heat sterilize them. The only thing is that you would need to cover them after they have been heated to boiling temp so that when they cool, no contaminates get into the berries. Otherwise, if you dont want to go through the hassle of cooking them…id say just dump them in and let them do their magic! My friend and I have made pumpkin spice ales with real, fresh pumpkin and have not had any problem with infection. The only thing you are going to notice is that your beer may start to ferment a little in secondary, however that is just from the sugars in the fruit.
I hope this helps!![/quote]
Thanks BBM for the advice…Both of my fermenters are currently empty too…but I don’t plan to stay that way long…I have about 12 honey nut brown ales left and a 6 of Irish Red Ale…so its getting dangerously low! Happy Brewing to you!
