Hi all, Making an apricot wheat with fresh apricots and am wondering how many pounds to use to give it some taste. Currently have 3.5 lbs of apricots for a 5 gallon batch. Not looking for anything overpowering just a hit of the taste. Any other advice that may be helpful would be appreciated. Additional info... adding to secondary fermenter. Thanks, Rob
Many people on here swear by macerating them, then freezing them and thawing them before adding them to secondary to burst the cell walls and get more flavor from them. If you're trying to get the beer done soon then I'd only keep them in secondary for 2 weeks or so, otherwise just keep tasting it until it's where you want. Also remember that the fruit will give you a bit more sugar to ferment so it will raise the alcohol.
I used five pounds of peaches with a wheat last year and got zero peach flavor. This year I'll be using close to ten lbs.
The only thing I'd add is that the sugars in fruit sometimes ferment unpredictably so just make sure fermentation has truly stopped before bottling if that is its fate. Not a big concern if you're kegging.
my tips: 1. don't macerate. just cut them up a little bit. 2. use some pits, but don't put all of the pits into your brew. 3. don't keep the beer on the apricots for longer than 8 weeks. all of the above advice was given to me by one of the top brewers in the world, so take it for what it is.
Or you could use dried organic apricots. They look kind of blackened, but once they are re-hydrated they are the normal color. Much more flavor than fresh, in my opinion.
