Here’s one for those with experience brewing fruit beers. Had at friend brew a strawberry pale. Used frozen strawberries (I’m unsure how much, pounds per gallon wise)). He says the beer tastes fine, but it is very viscous, just short of honey or syrup-like. I know fruit solids can cause that. Those would settle out under chill, no? Then you could rack off them? What about pectinase? Can that be used post-fermentation, or would that jack up the brew? He swears it isn’t ropy like an infection, but I don’t have enough experience with fruit beers to know his to help him fix it. 20+ years, I’ve made one fruit beer, and I used purée. I know you likely can’t diagnose completely given limited info, but any help would be greatly appreciated.
I'll try to help out. Short answer is you can add pectin after the fruit. I wonder about the concentration of strawberries, as you mentioned, and also any other ingredients in the product. As you know, pectin would cause jelling but strawberries have a relatively low pectin content, and it sounds like a box of pectin would have been dumped in the way you describe it. Pectin from fruit in beers is known to cause haze. So how hazy is it? Pectinase would be good for that.
I've made a lot of beers with fruit, added in many formats, usually in a secondary vessel. I've never seen any increase in the beer's viscosity...sometimes I've noticed the opposite, due to the water contribution of the fruit. The only time I've seen something remotely like what your friend describes was with a mead that used several berry purees. It took an amazingly long time for the cloud-o-puree solids to compact on the bottom of the fermenter, and some thick stuff got picked up when racking. But it was quite obvious what that was.
i haven’t seen or tried the beer yet, but I’ll pass along the fact that time is probably his best friend. Thanks!
