Easier way of making fruit beer?

Fudd · 12-07-2006, 10:36 PM

I looked up some threads on how to make fruity beers, specifically raspberry. It seems that a lot of people thought that using real fruit was difficult because you either have to leave more beer on the bottom to avoid the pieces of raspberry or find some sort of way to strain it. I boiled the raspberry as suggested and then strained the mush out from the juice with a very fine strainer. Then I took the mush and seeds and put it into a panty hose bag like when I steep grain and threw in the juice and the bag. It seems like it should work well, is there any reason though why I wouldn't want to leave the bag in too long? Let me know what you guys think.

**david_42** · 12-08-2006, 01:05 AM

I hate fruit beers, but when I do a blackberry cider, I use my really big grain bag for the fruit & hang & drain when done. Most of the time, that's about two weeks.

**Hopfan** · 12-08-2006, 01:51 AM

From all that I've read, when you boil fruit or juice, the pectin will congeal. Instead of boiling, you can just steam it for less than a minute and that will kill all the nasties without doing too much damage. The nylon bag makes sense, but when I did the Raspberry Ale for my wife, I noticed that the chunks of raspberry were quite actively moving around in the secondary. When I racked to tertiary, I ran it through a nylon bag that was laying in a large funnel. The funnel had a hose attached so that the beer wouldn't aerate going into the carboy and I "sealed" the whole system with sanitized saran wrap.

feedthebear · 12-08-2006, 03:54 AM

It might work for a small amount of small fruit. I don't think it would have helped me with 7 lbs of peaches.

If you're worried about losing beer, just add an extra quarter to half gallon of water in the primary. You won't loose much ABV.