The brewing partner and I have a recipe for a blueberry wit that tends to be pretty popular. We've brewed the wit, and it's fermented out, ready for blueberries. Normally, we add 5 lbs of frozen blueberries and let that sit for a couple weeks, then keg. However, this time we were thinking of using puree instead. My question is, does this need to sit as well? I imagine so, seeing as there are probably unfermented fermentable sugars in the puree, but when my brewing partner was working at a brewery, they would sometimes add fruit purees to their beer, and they just dumped it directly in the kegs, mixed it up, and put the keg on the truck to be self-distributed, same day. The description on Northern Brewer's site isn't very clear, just says it can be added to primary or secondary, but doesn't say anything about needing to ferment out. Any insights? TIA...
Purees still have sugars, and those sugars will ferment out. If you want to keg (and chill) before they ferment out (to retain some sweetness), that's okay, but I wouldn't bottle/growler anything (to give to someone else) from that keg later.
Yes, you need to let it ferment. It will ferment a little faster than whole fruit. Should be done in a week.
I just added apricot puree to a sour saison. If you read the label of the puree (depending on manufacturer) it should tell you the sugar content and acidity of the puree. That's good to know. I guess I should take a gravity reading.
Just did a wit, racked it onto 6lbs frozen blueberries, found it lacking blueberry so I added 3lbs blueberry puree from vintners harvest. The yeast is tearing through it as we speak so I would imagine that it has to sit for fermentation purposes, however I took a sample for taste before and after adding the puree and it seems that the puree adds flavor immediately. My beer is right where my friends want it. (that's another story all together) EDIT: the wit sat on the frozen blueberries for two weeks before pulling the sample for taste testing
Interesting. I brewed a blueberry wit once with 5 lbs of sugar. It did not seem worth repeated. Nice to hear that someone has found success with the same concept.
When I have used Purees, they made a bitch of a sludge at the bottom and caused racking challenges. But when I have used non-pureed fruits, they have floated, and racking from below them was fairly easy. Of course, I haven't used every kind of fruit.
I have 'whole' (<---scare quotes) fruit stick to the side of the siphon within the first gallon. It's like a moth to the flame of the intake on a siphon and it just clings to the siphon. I get a bunch of bubbles in the neck of the siphon for some reason that I can't shake down. I get a slow draw rate and it seems like a lot of oxygen is getting incorporated into the process. *Disclosure* I don't use any type of CO2 driven racking method. I've made 2 fruit beers. I've made 4 or 5 small batches of fruit wine. A bag of some sort just seems necessary in my process. Maybe with some CO2, a regular siphon instead of an auto-siphon like mine, and not blueberries? Surely some fruit wants to floc. 2:1 Odds on avocado.
Passionfruit is one of those exceptions. I didn't push it through a sieve to remove seeds (put all of the goo and seeds into fermenter) and it was a bitch to rack (seed clump clogged siphon). I've had similar experience with puree; I've started brewing bigger batches and just leaving 1/2 a gallon in the fermenter to not have to deal with the nightmare of racking just above the cake.
Nuts. Meant to write 5lbs blueberries. Don't think I can get away with blaming that on my iPhone. Just me, turning into an blithering idiot.
