adding fruit to your brew

Shop deals on ebay
shop deals on amazon
Advertise with us
The Homebrew Forum

Help Support The Homebrew Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
N

nac_brew

1 brew
Joined
Oct 3, 2014
Messages
38
Reaction score
2
Location
east sussex
Hi all
I'm about to start my 2nd AG brew on Saturdaya and will be doing a raspberry wheat beer, now the recipe states to add the raspberries to the fermenting wort after two days and leave for a week.
Should I do anything to the raspberries to help prevent infection? Also would they be better slightly mashed so the beer can take on more of the flavour or shiold I leave them whole?

It would good know know your thoughts on this and all types of fruit you add to your beer.

Thanks
 
If you're putting them in after two days, I'd want to make sure that there's no wild yeasts which will intefere.

I added some raspberries to an oatmeal stout which had fermented in primary to 5%. This probably would have been fine, but I pasteurised them.

Here's a good piece on the subject - http://www.port66.co.uk/fruit-additions/

I've also heard of people adding a camden tablet to the fruit before adding to the fermenter.
 
Having just prepared a 23 L batch of pilsner I decided to use part of the brew for a trial raspberry lager. Although the experiment failed, I think the results were interesting, so here is what I did:

When the pilsner was reaching the end of its primary fermentation, I defrosted 0.8 kg of frozen) raspberries, added ½ a level teaspoon of pectolase (Youngs) and crushed the fruit using a potato masher. The raspberry pulp was incubated at room temperature for 3 hours in a sealed plastic box before adding 400 ml of the pilsner. The mixture was then strained through a jelly bag and allowed to drain for an hour. The raspberry extract was poured into a demijohn, topped up with more pilsner and allowed to continue its secondary fermentation under lock (the remaining brew was processed as normal).

The raspberry lager underwent a much more vigorous secondary fermentation than the main brew and both were bottled after about 30 days. The raspberry lager produced a beautifully rose coloured brew that had a wonderful raspberry flavour (so far so good!) but unfortunately it was so extremely dry and bitter that it was effectively undrinkable. The main batch of pilsner was absolutely fine.

I can only think of two reasons why the raspberry brew was so dry: either the fruit provided conditions (acidity and/or nutrients) that allowed the lager yeast to attenuate much more efficiently, or a wild yeast was present on the raspberries which took over the fermentation.

Any thoughts?
 
I made a raspberry stout. Racked the almost complete primary on top of a pack of Funkin raspberry purée. Left it for 10 days. Then primed and bottle conditioned. It was really nice. I'd do it again.
 
Ogilvy said:
Having just prepared a 23 L batch of pilsner I decided to use part of the brew for a trial raspberry lager. Although the experiment failed, I think the results were interesting, so here is what I did:

When the pilsner was reaching the end of its primary fermentation, I defrosted 0.8 kg of frozen) raspberries, added ½ a level teaspoon of pectolase (Youngs) and crushed the fruit using a potato masher. The raspberry pulp was incubated at room temperature for 3 hours in a sealed plastic box before adding 400 ml of the pilsner. The mixture was then strained through a jelly bag and allowed to drain for an hour. The raspberry extract was poured into a demijohn, topped up with more pilsner and allowed to continue its secondary fermentation under lock (the remaining brew was processed as normal).

The raspberry lager underwent a much more vigorous secondary fermentation than the main brew and both were bottled after about 30 days. The raspberry lager produced a beautifully rose coloured brew that had a wonderful raspberry flavour (so far so good!) but unfortunately it was so extremely dry and bitter that it was effectively undrinkable. The main batch of pilsner was absolutely fine.

I can only think of two reasons why the raspberry brew was so dry: either the fruit provided conditions (acidity and/or nutrients) that allowed the lager yeast to attenuate much more efficiently, or a wild yeast was present on the raspberries which took over the fermentation.

Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

I think the basis of the issue is the fructose is a monosaccharide - the simplest sugar make up, (as opposed to a disaccharide like maltose) - which the yeast will gobble up furiously making the beer dry. The problem then is off flavours (one of which could be bitterness) come about when a brewers yeast feeds on monosaccharide as opposed to a disaccharide. The reason for which I'm not too sure of.
Like I said, that's how I understand it but I could be wrong...
 
As you suggest, I am sure that the yeast would ferment all of the fructose from the raspberries, but to make a completely dry brew it must also be fermenting the longer chain sugars in the pilsner. Since this doesn't seem to happen in the untreated brew, something else must be responsible. I suspect that wild yeast contamination is to blame - so maybe I should have rinsed the fruit with sulphite solution to kill the wild yeast or used Funkin puree like McMullan (since this is presumably sterile?).
 
Ogilvy said:
As you suggest, I am sure that the yeast would ferment all of the fructose from the raspberries, but to make a completely dry brew it must also be fermenting the longer chain sugars in the pilsner. Since this doesn't seem to happen in the untreated brew, something else must be responsible. I suspect that wild yeast contamination is to blame - so maybe I should have rinsed the fruit with sulphite solution to kill the wild yeast or used Funkin puree like McMullan (since this is presumably sterile?).
Click to expand...

Yes, I assumed these purees were free of wild yeasts and that was what made my decision. I considered blanching fresh raspberries, but didn't get around to doing it. Another method might be to soak small batches in a glass of something like gin for a minute or two? I'll be harvesting some wild blueberries soon for a experimental stout. Haven't figured out how to control the wild yeast yet, but I might just soak them briefly in gin. Then make a G&T :-D
 

Similar threads

Weatherman
Sour help.
Replies
19
Views
518
Jiffy176
Jiffy176
R
Fruit puree to DIPA
Replies
2
Views
329
Rik.cooper88
R
Dazzelknight
Help with fruit beer
2 3
Replies
40
Views
2K
Baldylocks Brewery
Baldylocks Brewery
David Woods
How to tell when conversion is complete
2 3 4
Replies
72
Views
2K
peebee
peebee
hoppyscotty
Brewing my first beer for cask
2
Replies
33
Views
3K
hoppyscotty
hoppyscotty

Latest posts

Back
Top