I've never been one to add fruit to beers, but now that summer is here in SoFL, my girlfriend requesting some raspberries hit the next batch of my Brett Blonde. What I'm thinking of doing is adding 24 oz pureed raspberry (to 5 gal) after primary fermentation finishes and letting the beer sit on the raspberry puree for 1-2 months. Before kegging I would cold crash for a week at 36 F, since I hear puree can be a pain in the ass. Thoughts?
I have been looking at doing the same thing. Several people have told me to pasteurize the fruit first to prevent infection. One person told me to heat it in vodka, but Midwest Supplies says to just heat the fruit in water up to 170 degrees. Everything that I have read has suggested less than a pound of berries per gallon of wort, and adding to the secondary is preferable to adding it in the primary, so this looks like a good plan for that!
the amt should be good, for a petite saison I like to use 16oz, so you'll have a bit more raspberry in yours 1-2mos is a long time though, I wouldnt go that long, if you keg I'd shoot for ~2wks on the fruit
Thanks Ryan, I used your Petite Raspberry Saison as a reference for the raspberry amount. My girl likes raspberry kind of punching her in the face though like Raspberry Tart, Framboise, Purple Haze, GD Wild Raspberry Ale, etc. I will definitely taste after 2 wks though per your recommendation. Cheers man & thanks for your blog!
Point of Order...Mr. Chairman. 24 oz / 5G t'ain't no 'punch in the face.' 1#/G gets you PITF. No need to rest the puree in 2ndary anywhere near 1-2 months. In 7 - 10 days...the raspberry turns a greyish-white and it's time to bottle.
Agree with HerbMeowing, also, I'd skip the puree and just pitch the raspberries whole instead, making sure to freeze the fruit first to break the cell walls and to help keep bacteria and wild yeast at bay. You'll get plenty of fruit flavor with whole fruit, and you won't have the pain in the ass of getting the beer off the puree later. Take it from someone whose done this.
I'm going to siphon a bit of wheat beer over blueberries into a 1 gallon carboy. So what you do is freeze the berries and no sanitation afterwards? How do you get the berries up to an adequate temp? Throw them in the carboy then sit at room temp for a few hours? Just curious for best practice here.
As for adding frozen berries, if you're going to do that you might think about buying them already frozen. Commercial companies flash freeze, which you don't have the equipment to do, and this helps preserve the freshness of the berry.
Do you put them directly into the carboy? Or do you put them in a sanitized muslin bag? Going to add fruit in a bit to my berliner but dont know the right approach.
I just racked into secondary over two pounds of blackberries with a red ale... first time to try this... I'm kind of wishing I had used a bag now, but I didn't.. I'm just going to let it sit on them for a week... then bottle. Primary fermentation was complete... I know there will probably be some broken berry residue since I didn't use a sanitized nylon bag.
