Miracle Fruit

A friend of mine picked up some of these again and has been bending my ear about them for over a year. For those who've never heard of them, they make sour things taste sweet. I haven't tried them yet, but being the super beer/wine/ferment anything and everything nerd that I am, I instantly wondered if these could be used in wine making...

My immediate concerns are that they don't have a lot of their own flavor, and they have a very low sugar content. The active ingredient that causes the taste bud effect is Miraculin, which is a non-heat-stable protein, subject to denaturation from heating. Which means that I couldn't even pasteurize it if I wanted.

Does anybody have any thoughts on what the results might be if I made a pretty simple white and racked it onto a bunch of miracle fruit (rehydrated, since getting them as whole fruit is near impossible in the quantities I'd want)?

it would be stooooopid expensive wouldnt it? Id also see (if your using the tabs and not fruit) If anything that is used to stablize the pill would react with alcohol or any of the byproducts of wine fermentation

I wonder how just a handful thrown into the must would turn out. Someone needs to do this, for SCIENCE!

I know someone on this forum got some and then tried some different beers. all were godawful horrible (tasted like vomit to them).

I would just keep some as a side garnish rather than ferment with them.

are you talking about acai? i contemplated trying to ferment this juice but have no exp with making wine just thought i'd do it because i have a bunch of yeast from brewing.

I think a tasting like the Mad Fermentist did would be more fun/economical than trying to ferment with it. http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2010/01/miracle-fruit-sour-beer-tasting.html

That said, what if it was added later, like 3 months after it was done? I would probably try it with a sour cherry wine.

no commercial business (winery) would do this because it is illegal. U can not use miracle berry in food... a big controversial thing happened in the FDA... where they were supposed to help diabetics... and when it was going to pass... it didn't... sugar lobby is strong...

quincannon said:

are you talking about acai? i contemplated trying to ferment this juice but have no exp with making wine just thought i'd do it because i have a bunch of yeast from brewing.

Click to expand...

no, not acai berry. I've only heard it called 'magic fruit' til now, but 'miracle' seems to be the common name now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_fruit

"The berry itself has a low sugar content[3] and a mildly sweet tang. It contains a glycoprotein molecule, with some trailing carbohydrate chains, called miraculin."

So it's low sugar to start with, and wildly perishable so you only ever see dried fruit or 'candies' from what I see.

You'd probably end up with too sweet a wine/mead. all the acidity and tannin to balance any sweetness would be gone and instead taste sweet.