I’m planning a guava wheat brew day. I’ve never brewed with fresh fruit before. I have a few questions I hope you guys can help me with.
At what point in the brewing process is it best to add the guava? End of boil? After fermentation is complete?
Is it best to purée the guava?
How would I sanitize the guava before adding it?
I would rack the finished beer onto the guava. For quick and minimal sanitation of the fruit, prep it for the beer and then freeze it for a couple of days - the alcohol content and low pH of the finished beer will inhibit an infection. I’ve done this a few times with peaches and never had a problem, but bf you’re going to worry about this not being enough and it’ll ruin your brewing experience, then you can soak the fruit in vodka first. Also, guava has pectin in it, so you may want to add some pectinase to the prepped fruit, but since you’re making a wheat beer some extra cloudiness might not be an issue.
Another option that I am currently trying for the first time as I type this is a fruit tincture. You basically use grain alcohol, or if its not legal in your state, vodka and soak the fruit in it for 1-2 weeks, then run through a coffee filter prior to adding to the finished beer. Not having tasted the beer, some of the potential benefits as I see it:
-complete control of flavor intensity- once your base beer has finished fermenting, you can pull a sample, split it up, and dose each one with increasing amounts of the tincture, then scale up for the whole batch. If you keg, you can get your beer kegged, carbed, then add the tincture in small amounts, re-seal the keg, and taste
-the grain alcohol shouldn’t affect head retention or even bump your beer’s abv that much
-not having to deal with a gloppy mess of fermented fruit when racking (though this can be avoided by adding the fruit in a sanitized paint bag or lining your fermenter with a paint bag for easy removal post fruit fermentation
-you are adding the flavor of FRUIT, not FERMENTED FRUIT
-a secondary fermentation or boil addition (even late) will drive off the volatile aromatics of fruit. I’ve heard that someone with no sense of smell can’t distinguish between strawberry and pineapple for instance
you are essentially making your own extract, as you would do with vanilla or cacao nibs. If you can wait a week or so, I will post back results from my raspberry chocolate milk stout.
