I am making a Raspberry Blonde and plan to use Raspberry Puree in Secondary. I have a can of 33 oz (2lbs 1 oz) puree that I’m planning to use, but I think 2lbs might make the raspberry flavor too strong.
I made this a few years ago and used 2.5 lbs of frozen raspberries and the raspberry flavor was too strong even after several months aging.
Any suggestions on how much of the puree to use for a 5 gallon batch?
How much is hard to say. If it was really strong last time I would probably use 1.5 lbs.
Try a pound for 1 week in the secondary, taste. If it’s too light, add more and give it another week?
I would do 1#, then mix the remainder of the raspberry puree with mid-grade vodka (filter the vodka a few more times through a Brita if you want) and cover it. Give it a little shake each time you walk by it. After 2 weeks or so, strain it.
If there is not enough raspberry flavor in the beer, you can supplement the flavor with the tincture/homemade extract at packaging to taste. If its decent vodka (or filtered additionally by you), you shouldn’t taste the booze since you will be using a very small amount per serving.
If you are carbonating by bottle, check to make sure that it is preservative free purée in any event. Otherwise the preservatives will kill the yeast or at least have a diminishing effect on the numbers of them left to ferment the addition.
