Anyone ever try brewing/fermenting with freeze dried fruit? I am eating some freeze dried organic blueberries at the moment, and obviously the first thing I started thinking about was how they'd go with beer. They've got a lot of flavor for not having any juice, or weight whatsoever. My thought would be to pulverize a shit ton of them into a fine powder and possibly add it at flameout/whirlpool. I think the blueberry flavor would be infused well, will add some extra fermentables (and possibly some color), you won't lose any beer due to fruit soaking it up, and you don't have to worry about racking off of them in the fermenter and clogging your siphon. I'll probably give it a try on a beer at some point this year, just thinking out loud...
I've never tried it but I think it's a good idea. It will add flavor and fermentables with no liquid. I think a cold crash would be almost mandatory to get all that berry mush as compacted as possible before packaging.
Just thinking out loud here, but I'd look to see if there are any preservatives in those blueberries and if so, I'd research to see if they could be toxic to your yeast.
There may be some preservatives, but there isn't any real need for any since all moisture has been removed, it's just not compatible with life. That's why freeze drying is great for preserving. Anti-caking agents though, those might have been added. Maybe cellulite, something like that. If any were added, I'm not sure how they would affect the beer.
Used plenty of frozen fruits, but not dryed. But, if they are pure with no additives, like an organic product should, then rock on.
That was an error, I meant to say cellulose powder. It's a common ingredient in food stuffs. Most pre-packaged shredded cheese has been coated with cellulose powder to keep it from sticking.
Here are the ones I'm eyeing. https://www.amazon.com/Natures-All-Foods-Freeze-Dried-Blueberries/dp/B009M4M6NE It says no preservatives, so I'm gonna give it a try on a Berliner weiße soon and will report back on fermentation/flavor!
I have thought about it but not yet experimented. I have had fruitbeers get a little watery because of the fruits' water content and this seemed like a way around that. Of course, the other way to get around it is to brew a bigger beer with the understanding that the water in the fruit will dilute some of the beery flavors and textures.
So I brewed a Berliner weisse on Sunday, added a bunch of pulverized freeze dried blueberries to it at the end of the boil. It turned the beer straight up red. After fermenting out it is a cloudy pink. Great attenuation as well and the samples taste great - lots of berry flavor. Could be a quick way to add fruit flavor to your beer without having to wait the extra month sitting on a bunch of it in secondary. We shall see!
Great! I ended up using 5 of the 1.2 oz bags of the dried blueberries, so just 6 oz total. After pulverizing them in a blender, the blueberry powder in the boil added some awesome berry flavors and color. There is nothing 'artificial' about the flavors either. Give it a try and let me know what you think, but I'm sold that this is a nice easy method for adding fruit to beer. The yeast I used was from a wild IPA, so probably a sacch/brett blend. FG was super dry after 2 weeks so I went ahead and bottled. Lots of sour berry flavors, and spritzy. Makes for a good hot weather beer for sure.
Since i pulverized the blueberries into a powder, it pretty much all dissolved when I added it to the boil. Hardly got any fruit sludge whatsoever! I should say though if you do get some at the bottom of the kettle, I'd bring it into the fermenter.
Alot of breweries when using strawberries prefer to use freeze dried. They are more concentrated on flavor and dont carry all the water. Another plus is sometimes fresh strawberries can carry a wierd flavor threw fermentation. I use freeze dried strawberries all the time in secondary or right along with one of my dry hops. My last neapolitan stout I did with a bunch of freeze dried strawberries as one of my adjuncts.
As long as we are resurrecting this thread, I finally got around to experimenting, as alluded to in my May 2017 post. I cleaned the cupboards before heading on vacation a week ago, throwing 2 bags freeze dried blueberries and one bag freeze dried raspberries raspberries into a small batch basic pale sour thing I had going on. When I got back yesterday, I tasted, and it has a decent berry thing going on, although with just lacto and US05, it is somewhat lacking for other character. Perhaps on New Years Day I will experiment with blending with the cherry krieky thing that has been in a fermenter for a while. There is a brett character in there that I might want to try to tame through blending; either I bottle a blended batch of deliciousness or dump a couple lessons learned.
