adding FRESH fruit?

I'm adding 4 pounds of fresh pineapple to my pale ale in secondary. My question is should I wait for the pineapples to become ripe before adding? Similar to waiting for them to be ripe before eating.

Secondly I will be cutting the pineapple into chunks and steeping to pasteurize. I'm assuming I'll have to cut it into small enough pieces to fit through the carboy neck. Or should I crush it and make it pulpy?

Thanks

I would crush it.

My LHBS just did a class on brewing with fruit, and one of the beers we tasted was a strawberry ale of some sort. Anyway, apparently the strawberries weren't ripe before they were used, and the beer wasn't very good. In fact it was bad.

Based on that, I'd wait until the fruit is ripe.

Also, crushing it or cubing it will be fine. I'd go with whatever is easiest.

biertag said:

fresh pineapple

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*Just a word of caution, fresh pineapple and papaya contain enzymes that break down proteins. I could see this maybe producing off flavors. These enzymes can be denatured with heat, so there would be no issue with canned or cooked.

*Disclaimer - I have no experience with making beer with fresh pineapple or papaya. There very well could be nothing wrong with using fresh.

Well I went to the farmers market today and grabbed a few fresh pineapples. Cut into them this afternoon to see what I got and they are ripe and ready to go. They are really sweet. Have it all ready in a ziplock for tomorrows rack to secondary for fruit and dry hops.

Decided to cube them into little pieces. If the steeping doesn't break it down further then I'll just crush them with a potato masher.

You can usually tell if a pineapple is ripe by smelling the bottom. Strong wweet smell == ripe, fainter sweet smell or no sweet == underripe, fermented smell == overripe.