Adding flavors

Beer Recipe Design
1

A friend and me are planning on branching out with our brews. We already do extract 5-gallon brews, and a few all grain small batches. We don’t have the required equipment yet for 5 gallon all grains, but someday I am sure we will move there.

However, we are at the point in our brewing where we are feeling adventurous. We enjoy using the recipes given to us in ingredients kits, but we also want to play around with stuff. So my question is: When is the right time to add flavors to beer that aren’t already there?

For example… if we make a blonde ale. Nice and lite, perfect for summer. But, we also like the idea of adding some sort of fruit to this. Citrus or Berry maybe? Something tart? Regardless of what we choose, I am curious when we should add the fruit. Should we just throw it into the fermenter after a few days? Should we add it to the boil? I don’t want to mess up the yeast by adding more natural sugars during fermentation, but it feels like throwing some fruit into the fermenter 1-2 days after brewing might work. Any tips?

2

Fruit is usually added to a secondary after about a week is what I do. Citrus add zest at the end of the boil. If you want tart make a kettle sour. Fruit won’t give you tart. If you add alot of citrus trying to get it tart it’ll be crap

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OK so if we add citrus, we add zest to the end of the boil (I have read about 3 oranges worth of zest for a 5 gallon brew), any other fruit we just toss a handful of that fruit in the secondary fermenter? Any suggestions on how to determine how much fruit to add to the secondary?

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Each fruit will require a different amount in secondary. Usually start around 1lb/gal of beer. If you search around you might get better ideas per fruit.

If you want tart try using berries. I did a mixture of raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries. It was tart! I also used mandarins once. It too was tart.

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What i do i do add orange zest and cilantro for example about 20 min before end of boil. In a muslinbag. Seems to work.