Experimenting with priming

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Newfermenter1

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Anyone ever use jelly/preserves for priming? Nothing with chunks of fruit, but peach, cherry, jalepeno, apple, etc, etc? boil it up instead of sugar, or corn syrup? Might be cool, anyone try it before? good or bad idea? Same ratio?
 
The problem I see is that most jams have preservatives, this can stunt the yeast and carbonation could fail. Another problem could be the fact that fruits have different types of sugars, so carbonation could take a long time, or pectins from the fruit could add haze. The fruit would probably leave a taste in your beer, and this might not work with the style, on the otherhand it could make the beer more interesting (I'm not really into fruit beers). I wouldn't try it since corn sugar is cheap and you know it works.
 
Also, it would be hard to know how much fermentables were in the fruit, so you may end up with relatively flat beer, or bottle bombs.
 
Interesting idea but it sounds like a good way to get unpredictable results and cloudy beer.
If you are going to do it then I thnk I'd do it in clear PET soda bottles so I could see what was happenong and squeeze test for pressure.

Why not do it on a part of a batch using different priming agents?
 
Whenever anybody mentions using anything unusual to bottle carb, the same question always comes up...

If you're interested in adding the flavor, why take the chance with unpredictable carbonation results when you could just add it to the secondary instead?

When you really stop to think about it, there is almost no reason to add anything unusual at bottling because all of it could have been more easily added in secondary. You get all the flavor and aromas, but don't have to worry about bottle bombs or under-carbonation if your estimate of the sugar content is off.

Seriously, just add it to secondary if you're that curious. You'll get pretty much the same result flavor-wise, but you won't have to cope with unpredictable carbonation.

I once bottle conditioned with honey. It worked fine, but in retrospect, it would have been easier and just as tasty had I added it to secondary and I wouldn't have had to try and figure out how much I needed to add to carb... The only reason I would do it again is to put it there on the bottle to impress people- "bottle conditioned with 100% pure honey". Otherwise, dextrose works perfectly well and eliminates the guesswork.
 
Sir Humpsalot said:
Whenever anybody mentions using anything unusual to bottle carb, the same question always comes up...

If you're interested in adding the flavor, why take the chance with unpredictable carbonation results when you could just add it to the secondary instead?

When you really stop to think about it, there is almost no reason to add anything unusual at bottling because all of it could have been more easily added in secondary. You get all the flavor and aromas, but don't have to worry about bottle bombs or under-carbonation if your estimate of the sugar content is off.

Seriously, just add it to secondary if you're that curious. You'll get pretty much the same result flavor-wise, but you won't have to cope with unpredictable carbonation.

I once bottle conditioned with honey. It worked fine, but in retrospect, it would have been easier and just as tasty had I added it to secondary and I wouldn't have had to try and figure out how much I needed to add to carb... The only reason I would do it again is to put it there on the bottle to impress people- "bottle conditioned with 100% pure honey". Otherwise, dextrose works perfectly well and eliminates the guesswork.
Interesting, and thanks for the input. When adding anything to the secondary, I presume that it should be treated similar to the initial wert, i.e. boil it up for sanitation, then cool it quickly and pour it in? :mug:
 
I would hesitate to try any experiments. I have 2 cases of experiments sitting in my closet. They're flat.
 
Sir Humpsalot said:
Seriously, just add it to secondary if you're that curious. You'll get pretty much the same result flavor-wise, but you won't have to cope with unpredictable carbonation.

Otherwise, dextrose works perfectly well and eliminates the guesswork.

What he said.
 
If you are going to add something to flavour the beer what is the difference between adding it to the primary or secondary fermenter ?
 
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