How many points does can of apricot puree add?

Northern Brewer General
1

Hi All,
I am making a version of the Paragon Apricot Blonde.
I figured the recipe without the puree, 11# grain total, is OG 1.045 for 5 gallons.

add Apricot puree to primary 2-3 days after start.

OG supposed to be 1.055

does is make sense, then, that the puree adds 10 points?

the can says specific gravity is 1.036-1.048
it’s 3 lb can.
130 grams sugar

thanks,

2

I recently had the same question, but I didn’t have a target so I just dumped the fruit in. I brewed a cherry brett saison. It is only the second time that I have used fruit. At least you read the can and found the sugar content. I never even read the can.

For your beer, I went into Promash and created a 5 gallon recipe with a gravity of 1.045. I then added 130 grams (.286 pounds) of can sugar to the recipe. The predicted gravity was 1.048. So, it doesn’t look like 10 points will be added by the fruit. In addition, there will be some water in the puree that will dilute the beer.

What caught my eye is that I only had 7.75 pounds of grains in the sample recipe, but the kit has 11 lbs. I am not sure what Northern Brewer allows for wort left in the kettle or efficiency. I adjusted the recipe (5.5 gallons with 70% efficiency) to 11 pounds of grain and hit a gravity of 1.054 with no fruit added. So, I am guessing there was something wrong with your calculations.

In the book American Sour Beer, Appendix B gives a formula, but the general statement is that adding fruit does not typically boost alcohol content significantly. If the beer is stronger, the fruit can dilute the beer and lower the final alcohol content.

3

Thanks for the calculations…

I use brew target.
11# grain. 5.5 gal 70% eff.
I got 1.045
I figured that’s what NB recipe is meant to do, then add fruit.

I am brewing it now, and to be safe I am going for about 1.050 or so, before fruit.

As with all first time recipes, I will learn from this one,

Thanks!

4

Good luck with the brew. I am trying to decide whether or not to tweak mine with another can of puree. I will give it a little more time first.

For 1.054 with Promash, I should have said an efficiency of 75%. Northern Brewer used to provide a Promash file and one could see the assumptions that were made, but the details slip my mind. If I brew one of their kits, I tend to scale the recipe up to 6 or 6.5 gallons and buy the ingredients separately to get more control over the recipe.

5

Would it work to:

  1. measure the gravity of the puree then add the points it provides to the points from the grains,
  2. add the volume of the puree to the volume out of the grain/extract portion, then
  3. divide total points by total volume?