Beginner Brewster

Hi,
I have made some beer before with a friend (IPA w/extract) but still consider myself a beginner at brewing beer and I've decided to buy me some gear to get started. I am planning to use a 30L container to make 2 fruit beers, 1st will be a dark creamy orange stout or pale ale, the 2nd will be a dark blueberry stout. My questions that I have not been able to get answers to by scouting google search is how I should really go forward with it. On some places people are saying to add either frozen fruit or fruit puree in the secondary fermentation (which for me will be after tapping on wine bottles). Seeing as I live in norway, fruit puree is hard to find and frozen fruits have microorganisms endangering the whole batch. If I should make my own puree it won't be sterile either. Also, is it possible to have fruit additives when fermenting in the bottles or will the headspace be too small at any rate?

Seeing that this forum is greatly populated I'm hoping someone can help me to find the right solution to help me brew some awesome beer!

It is going to take a TON of fruit to shine through the malty backbone of a stout. Something on the order of 8-10 lbs. If you want it to be subtle, at least 6 lbs.

That said, you definitely want to add it in secondary. The reason most people say to puree it, is that the more surface area the yeast have access to, the more of the fruit character you are going to get in the final beer.

For an easy home solution to sanatizing the fruit, just boil it. If you have a food processor or blender, use that to puree. If not, just cut it up as fine as you can. Then boil it in as little water as possible. About 5 minutes in a boil (or 20 minutes above 160F) will kill all known human pathogens except for ringworm! Cool it down to the same temp as the beer before adding it to the carboy/bucket, then rack the beer on top of the fruit to minimize oxidation.

Add that to the secondary, and continue to ferment until you hit FG. Note that the fruit is mostly fruitose, which is primarily simple sugar and will lower your recipe's FG slightly, so give it plenty of time. When I do a fruit addition, I always give it at least 2-3 more weeks in secondary after I add the fruit. Some of the more acidic fruits like apples/lemons/limes can take more like a month or two.

What do you mean by: "is it possible to have fruit additives when fermenting in the bottles or will the headspace be too small at any rate?"

You definitely want to be at FG by the time you are in the bottles. You don't want to have any fermentables in the bottle besides your measured priming sugar. The bottling procedure of a fruit beer is exactly the same as any other beer.

Hope that helps!

I may be wrong as I'm a relitively new to brewing, but if you add fruit to secondary you shouldn't really need to worry about sanitization that much. There will be alcohol in the beer by that time that should kill most microorganisms...

Please correct me if I'm wrong thought because I probably am!

I've tried 3 times to make a decent blueberry beer. The last one (and it will be my last one) had 6 pounds of blueberries in it and while it turned my cream ale purple, there was almost no blueberry flavor to it, just a harsh acid taste. Put the blueberries in a pie or muffins and get a good quality extract if you really want blueberry flavor in your stout.

I also make a raspberry red ale with raspberries that we picked from the neighbor's patch. They were rather tart berries and I used 4 pounds of them in the 5 gallon batch. I just dumped the last 36 bottles last week because I just couldn't face drinking any more and had good beer to go into the bottles.

Go ahead and try your fruit flavored beer with real fruit but remember my experiences.

+1 to Topher's comments as he pretty much laid it out for you, now my .02..................

There is no exact science to using fruit and there are tons of success stories out there but IMO I feel as though I have read about a lot more epic failures...............

If one of your brew buddies has ever done a successful batch with fruit I highly recommend you partner up with them for the first go around. If not, and not to discourage you, brew up some more simple styles of beer first and learn your equipment and processes before venturing into the world of fruit!

Personally the closest I get to using fruit is my Peach Wheat which turns out fantastic! 4oz of peach extract goes into the batch at bottling time That's as close to fruit as I get aside from the orange twist I'll put in a Wit

I may be wrong as I'm a relitively new to brewing, but if you add fruit to secondary you shouldn't really need to worry about sanitization that much. There will be alcohol in the beer by that time that should kill most microorganisms...

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You are definitely correct about anything harmful to human health getting into the beer. The more important reason to sanatize any fruit before tossing them in secondary would be that most fresh fruit naturally houses wild yeast, lactic acid, and bacteria that is perfectly fine for human consumption (probiotic, even), but will sour a beer, like Brettanomyces or Lactobacillus. All these guys will adversely affect your wort, and won't die off in an alcohol environment. Brettanomyces will even eat your yeast!

So, you really need to kill off those guys if you want a clean fermentation from fresh fruit.

It's perfectly acceptable to sour it on purpose, too, but that's a whole other process I have some bacteria souring a Flanders brown for me as we speak!

Yep, actual fruit is a pain to use. It takes up space, costs too much, and often tastes bad. I second Topher's recommendation of extract. I make 3 gallon wheats for my wife and put 2-3 tablesspoons of blackberry extract in at kegging time. It's very good, and very easy. Kyle

I've made a batch of raspberry stout with chocolate and crystal malt which has stood for 3 weeks in a cold storage room for carbonation with normal sugar cubes. I opened a bottle to taste, was obviously bitter but smelled of raspberry at least and had an aftertaste that hinted of chocolate and caramel. Only thing I'm kinda worried is that there was very little foam. Does anyone have experience with "Wyeast 1450-PC - Denny's Favorite 50" and if I did wrong by using sugar cubes (sucrose)?

Will at any rate be interesting to taste this batch after 3 months when it's fully matured

Edit:
Thinking about how cold the storage room was, I'm suspecting that the cold has retarded the carbonation. I'm putting the bottles in a room at normal temperature to see after a week if the carbonation has improved. I'm sure that I mixed air into the batch prior to bottling and I do see small bubbles on the surface of the beer on the inside of the bottles now. Maby I'm just overthinking this

Tetsujin said:

I've made a batch of raspberry stout with chocolate and crystal malt which has stood for 3 weeks in a cold storage room for carbonation with normal sugar cubes. I opened a bottle to taste, was obviously bitter but smelled of raspberry at least and had an aftertaste that hinted of chocolate and caramel. Only thing I'm kinda worried is that there was very little foam. Does anyone have experience with "Wyeast 1450-PC - Denny's Favorite 50" and if I did wrong by using sugar cubes (sucrose)?

Will at any rate be interesting to taste this batch after 3 months when it's fully matured

Edit:
Thinking about how cold the storage room was, I'm suspecting that the cold has retarded the carbonation. I'm putting the bottles in a room at normal temperature to see after a week if the carbonation has improved. I'm sure that I mixed air into the batch prior to bottling and I do see small bubbles on the surface of the beer on the inside of the bottles now. Maby I'm just overthinking this

Click to expand...

The bubbles you see may just be the yeast releasing CO2 as the beer carbonates.