The canned stuff NB sells is fine. It’s pasteurized, so the advantage is that there is not any risk of infection from using it. However, pasteurization takes heat, and heat changes the flavor a little. I used some of the cherry puree, and it tasted fine, for canned fruit puree. It still tastes canned.
Fresh or frozen berries will taste much better, and are almost certainly going to have some wild yeast or lacto on them. When you’re adding them to secondary, chances are good that the alcohol and/or hops will kill whatever is on them. There’s always the chance of it taking hold in your beer, though. If you read all the struggles that sour brewers have in getting their purchased lacto cultures to sour their beer, though, I think you’ll be somewhat comforted.
Actually, I’ve found that there is a significant chance you will get an infection from adding fruit, less if using frozen fruit, but still it can happen. And the alcohol level in beer is NOT enough to prevent that.
The good news is that if you do end up with an infection this way, it won’t ruin the beer. Just make sure you give it enough time to run it’s course before you bottle to prevent bottle bombs.
…unless you have some of that crazy Finnish bacteria that grows on the fruit there. Like the people, it’s pretty robust and not affected much by a little alcohol. :mrgreen:
I’ve had pretty good luck adding fresh fruit to secondary, but I try to only add it to a carboy in secondary to keep as much O2 as possible out. Lacto will have a pretty hard time in anything over 10IBU and 3-4%ABV, so you should be pretty safe there. Most of the wild yeasts and brett won’t have much alcohol tolerance above 1-2%ABV, but it only takes a few more robust cells to cause an infection if there’s enough O2 available in the headspace.
But absolutely, the possibility of a wild infection is there with fresh fruit, and some bad stuff can happen if it gets exposed to O2.
Well it seems like it could be 50/50 on pasteurized or fresh/frozen. I’d love to be able to get real fruit taste as I’m a big fan of fruit wheat and love the fruit wheats my local brewery comes up with. It sounds like the safest bet as far as possible contamination is pasteurized but I’ll get more flavor from fresh. I plan on doing NB’s dark cherry stout next and want to use real cherries for that too. So I guess I’ll just pick a side and see how it goes.
No picking sides necessary… Go with your gut. I don’t think I’m really disagreeing with Rebuilt - if I remember correctly, I believe he’s said in the past that the infections he’s gotten through fresh fruit actually worked well in the beer, as long as you let it run its course. Hopefully he’ll comment and clarify, though.
Canned fruit, though, tastes like canned fruit. If you’re willing to take a slight chance, frozen fruit will taste better. If you don’t want to worry about it, the canned stuff will work, too.
Full disclosure - I love brewing sours. If I got an infected batch, I’d make it a sour and not think twice about it. :cheers:
I was leaning more towards frozen anyways. As badly as I don’t want to mess up my first five gallon brew I really want real fruit taste. And you are right, a sour is a good back up plan. I have only had one sour in my life and wouldn’t mind trying another. Frozen it is. Now I just need to hurry up and wait for primary to be done! And just to refresh my memory, the general rule is to use one lb of fruit per gallon and rack on top of the fruit, right? Also with the frozen fruit, is there anything that needs to be done to them before I put them in?
Got it. Also, When do you recommend transferring and the fruit addition and is there anything that needs to be done to the fruit before I put it in? I have yet to get a hydrometer but plan on it for my next batch.
What I have done based on reading a number of posts over the years, is freeze the fruit, let it partially thaw and pound it with a rolling pin or somesuch. Then freeze again. The freezing/thawing cycles, as well as the mushing, help break down cell walls and expose more fruit goodness. And definitely at least 1lb per gallon if you want anything more than some color.
I wait until fermentation is done(usually a week and a half or so) before racking on top of the fruit. Fermentation will kick back in, so I leave it another week or two before bottling.
[quote=“JimRMaine”]What I have done based on reading a number of posts over the years, is freeze the fruit, let it partially thaw and pound it with a rolling pin or somesuch. Then freeze again. The freezing/thawing cycles, as well as the mushing, help break down cell walls and expose more fruit goodness. And definitely at least 1lb per gallon if you want anything more than some color.
I wait until fermentation is done(usually a week and a half or so) before racking on top of the fruit. Fermentation will kick back in, so I leave it another week or two before bottling.[/quote]
I am sitting at one week of fermentation. I was planning on racking over today so that there is still active fermentation going on for the fruit. But if it picks up again like you say I think I could stand waiting another few days. I am tempted to do it right now though. This beer is testing my patience ha!
I also just read that there could be the possibility of bottle bombs if you add fruit and use priming sugar to bottle due to the excess of sugar. Does anyone have any insight on this?
Like Rebuilt suggests, if you let it go for a week or two after racking onto the fruit, it should ferment out the fruit sugars, which will pretty much take away the chance for bottle bombs if your priming sugar is correctly measured.
Definitely let it ferment out once you add the fruit. Make sure you have a lot of headspace in your fermenter, too, with raspberries. They love to float and clog up the mouth of a carboy, and the airlock stem if you aren’t using a blow-off tube. And they trap a huge amount of CO2 while they’re fermenting and like to ride up the shoulders of a carboy. Makes an impressive mess…
[quote=“Brews-R-us”]Has anybody added fruit when kegging? Kind of like dry hopping but with fruit?
Paul[/quote]
That sounds like a good way to clog you dip tube. When hopping in the keg, I put the hops in a bag to prevent that. Not sure you could work that with fruit.
Like porkchop said, in my experience infections from fruit will give the beer a suble funk that doesn’t ruin it - just makes thing more complex. I’ve gotten this most times I’ve used fresh fruit and occasionally with frozen fruit. I typically prefer frozen over fresh for two reasons: the cell walls have been broken down by the freezing, resulting in more flavor extradition, and the frozen fruit is much easier to get when it is at peak ripeness, important for getting the best flavor.
I am going to be using a five gallon secondary which wont leave much head space at all. I will definitely use blowoff tubing, however I dont have the appropriate size tubing. When I set up blowoff tubing on my primary I had to use the main piece of the airlock and attach a tube to the stem. If what you say is true it looks like I am going to have to make a trip to the local home brew store to see if the have the right size tubing. Is there anything else I should be worried about while using my five gallon secondary to ferment fruit?
The last time I added raspberries, I only filled it up to where it was just touching the shoulders of the carboy, so maybe 0.75-1 gallon head space? The liquid level never made it up to the neck of the carboy when the whole fruit mess expanded, so no problem with the airlock. A 5-gallon carboy holds more like 5.5 gallons, so if you started with 5 gallons of beer in your primary, you might be OK after trub loss. If you had a gallon jug available, too, you could always put the excess in there.
Only other thing to add - getting a few to several pounds of frozen/thawed fruit into a carboy is a major PITA.
Consider using a bucket instead of a carboy - it makes things so much easier for this situation. No issues with blow-off and a heck of a lot easier to clean afterwards.
That’s a good point. I usually only add fruit to a beer that’s going to be sitting on the fruit in secondary for several months, so a bucket isn’t a good candidate. For a clean ale, though, a bucket is probably the best way to go.
