Do I have to let them linger?

I would contact Larry (@LeRose) and ask him what to do. Larry knows his cranberry stuff!!

Cheers!

P.S. Just out of curiosity, where were your cranberries grown?

 

While I personally have no experience with brewing with the fruit I have made a few batches, which turned out well, using 'processed' cranberry. One batch was made with 100% Cranberry Juice:



Cheers!

 

Cranberries are very acidic. The pH of straight juice is about 2.5. Usually around 8.5% sugar and roughly - very roughly - 2.5% acid wt/wt. You are correct in that there is a significant amount of pectin and heat will certainly liberate it. With sufficient sugar, it will gel up. By itself, it won't. The flavor changes during freezer storage. Freshly harvest cranberries are fairly dry and have a pronounced green straw-like flavor that goes away after about 21 days in the freezer. Some people like that flavor, most do not. When we pressed raw juice back in the day, we restricted truly fresh fruit to 25% by weight. Fresh fruit I'd also quite dry- kinda woody. In my opinion, frozen is the way to go, but I have had interesting beers using fresh as well. You have to watch your usage - the low pH and antimicrobial activities can affect fermentability. Cranberry wine...many have tried, zero have succeeded except by blending juice with a white wine.

Sliced of crushed or even a course grind would be fine. Whole fruit will not provide any flavor whatsoever. Whole berries will burst if cooked. I would not cook them myself - too much other stuff comes out.

@JackHorzempa - I remember your cranberry using the concentrate I sent you being Quote pleasant capturing the essence of cranberry without using the sledgehammer.

 

Personally, I'd get frozen and puree it. @JackHorzempa's idea of using 100% juice also seems like a great way to go.

Also, I get the joke. Hope this helps everyone else.

 

That is absolutely an AWESOME post.

I will nominate you for best post of BA 2021 if that becomes a thing.

Cheers to you!

 

I made a cider with frozen cranberries. Thawed, added to fermenter. I don't recall the details -- maybe I crushed them gently in the bag or pulsed them a few times in a sanitized food processor. Added to the primary fermenter. This cider was extremely tart. I backsweetened with apple juice concentrate but it was still a challenge to consume. I ended up dumping it to make room for something else. I'll probably never be motivated to use cranberries again.

 

@JackHorzempa ...do you still have the math I worked out for you when I sent you the cranberry concentrate? I save everything, or so I thought because I can't find it. If I knew the ratios I gave you for concentrate I could back that out to the fruit equivalent. That might give @butterygold a good starting point. I enjoyed the subtlety of the cranberry in your beer.

@butterygold ..what you describe for your brew sounds similar to Three Cranes from Mystic (unfortunately closed a couple years ago). I don't know if there are any clone recipes out there for a relatively obscure beer from a very good small brewery.

 

No, I do not.

From memory you suggested that for one batch I use 0.8 quarts of Trader Joe's 100% Cranberry Juice and I decided to use the entire quart of that juice.

You sent me a plastic bottle of your concentrate which you hand wrote in black ink: "Cranberry Conc. 50 Brix". That plastic bottle on the bottom lists: "500 ml 16 oz.". I really can't remember if that bottle was full but I added what you gave me to that batch.

Is the above information helpful to you?

Cheers!

 

Raspberries don't really add sweetness unless you backsweeten after fermentation and prevent the additional sugars from fermenting.

 

Here's a cranberry saison recipe where it us basically a kettle sour technique:

https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/homebrew-recipe/fall-cranberry-saison/

Pretty sure there are some more recipes on the HBA site. And an interesting conversation here. I don't completely agree that adding to the mash at 150F or so would bring out undesirable flavors. Adding to the boil would be a different story, but not at mash temps. Boiling will tend to destabilize the red color, however. I think I would add either in the mash or in primary fermentation or secondary fermentation depending on the flavor you want. For a lager, would even consider adding during the layering step.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/cranberry-saison-add-cranberry-to-mash-or-secondary.639122/

Search terms Cranberry saison will give you lots of food for thought!

@JackHorzempa the bottle I sent you was full, so 500 ml at 50 brix in a five gallon batch is a pretty heft shot of cranberry yet the flavor remained subtle. I think there is flexibility in when to add and what to add depending on the flavor profile one is looking to achieve.

 

I edited while you were replying. I would definitely not add fruit directly to the boil. In the mash, you would not end up with fruit in the boil, just the juice extracted during the mash step. Lathering would leave the fruit with the spent mash. Now boiling juice for a long time would destabilize the color and possibly give you a cooked fruit flavor. So basically the cranberry becomes a souring agent rather than contributing the fruit flavor, in my opinion. I'd lean to adding later in the process if flavor and a bit of red color is the goal. Fruit would also foam pretty heavily in the boil, so I'm thinking fruit in the boil makes zero sense!