I have taken the fruit addition calculation functionality from BrewCipher and repackaged it in a standalone spreadsheet; FruitCalc, to make it more accessible to folks who don't use BC. FruitCalc is (IMHO) better than any of the other fruit addition calculators I've seen, because it... - understands that much of fruit is water and uses estimates of the water content for each type of fruit. I've seen other calculators that purport to handle this, but they somehow always predict an increase in ABV, where that should often not be the case (depending on the base beer and the fruit). - understands that much of fruit is neither soluble carbs nor water, and adjusts the effective fruit weights/volumes accordingly. - takes into consideration non-sugar carbs (non-fermentable, but partially soluble) for each fruit type, affecting gravities. FruitCalc is available in .XLS and .ODS format, and be downloaded from the usual BrewCipher download locations, or from this link... http://sonsofalchemy.org/library/
Where do the data come from? I'm appreciative that it might not have been so easy to come by for so many fruits, which don't necessarily have consistently reported sugar and water contents.
Most of the data come from on line "nutritional information" and the like. There are some differences depending on sources, but it's easy enough to find the central tendencies. Some of it came from computations involving a comparison of data between forms of the same fruit; fruits, juices, and purées. Some of the data came from from kitchen lab work.
If anyone is interested in the actual model, it's laid out in the May/June 2021 issue of BYO. If you have an online subscription, here's the link: https://byo.com/article/ciphering-fruit-beers/
Nice write-up. Looking forward to receiving my print copy. The Boysenberry Crème Blonde Ale sounds delicious.
Thought I'd throw this out there, since someone on another forum was just looking for a way to determine the impact of bottle priming on their beer's ABV. You can easily use FruitCalc to do that: Put your base beer's information in, then select Sugar from the "fruit" dropdown and enter the amount. Select Water from the next "fruit" dropdown and enter the amount you used in your priming solution.
