Finally a fruit beer.

I am posting this thread as a documentation for myself and a tool for others tryng to make a fruit beer. There is a lot of conflicting advice out there, so I though I would document what does, or doesn't work for me.

After much reading and cunsulting I decided on my recipe and method of fruiting my brew. SWMBO likes them REALLY fruity, and this one's for her, so fruity it shall be.

Type: Extract
Batch Size: 5.00 gal
Boil Size: 3.25 gal
Boil Time: 60 min

Ingredients

6.00 lb Fruit - Raspberry, Blackberry, Sweet Black Cherry (0.0 SRM) Adjunct

6.00 lb Wheat Dry Extract (8.0 SRM) Dry Extract (5lb added last 10 min)
0.50 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain
0.50 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM) Grain

0.50 oz Cluster [7.00%] (60 min) Hops 16.5 IBU
0.25 oz Cluster [7.00%] (30 min) Hops 6.3 IBU

1 Pkgs American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056) Yeast-Ale

I decided on 1lb of fruit per 1 lb of DME. Used 2 lbs each of raspberries, blackberries, and sweet black cherries. I pureed, froze, pasteurized, cooled, and mixed the fruit right in my primary with my wort, using it as my top off water, straining out the cherry skins. This is going to be a VERY purple brew. Not sure of the effects of primary versus secondary, but I will soon find out, I have head that both are the preferred way.

Fermentation had began after 3 hrs and 2 bubbles per second after 5 hrs, definatley gonna need the blow off for this bad boy. :rockin:

I will keep ya'll posted to the progress and result of my brewing attempt. Hopefully this one works out nice, I would rather do primary fruit than secondary, just seems a little easier that way, just a little worried about aroma loss. I'm sure it will turn out great, smells fantastic, and tasted pretty damn good going in too.

EDIT- I used the Ale yeast to allow the fruity flavor from the fruit show through instead of the banana/clove flavor of a traditional hefe yeast.

I will be definitely interested in the end result, I am looking for a camping brew. I think everyone would like something like this(alot of females), along with my mulled apple wine(campfire treat) I am not a wine fan, but it is really good. This is a recipe I got from the Brown County Winery.

Did the 6lbs of fruit add a lot to the gravity?

You would think so, but no.

I assumed that it would add a significant amount, but my hydrometer reading was 1.052, adjusted for temp 1.054, spot on what it beersmith said it would be without the fruit.

I can't imagine that it is insoluble, and I KNOW that it has sugars in it, so if anyone has any insight into this phenomenon I would love to know. After setting a while I did have a lot of sediment on the bottom of my hydro tube, much more than usual, but the wort was dark purple, the fruit had to have added something to the beer.

Maybe it just takes a while for the fruit to break down, I don't know, but I would think that it would have to add something. I guess we'll see what is going on when I transfer to secondary.

I should have taken pictures, this is one great looking brew. I promise to have some in a week or so when I transfer to secondary.

Also, I did lose a little DME to a small spill, so the fruit could have made up that small amount of gravity.

ilikestuff said:

I should have taken pictures, this is one great looking brew. I promise to have some in a week or so when I transfer to secondary.

Also, I did lose a little DME to a small spill, so the fruit could have made up that small amount of gravity.

Click to expand...

That would make sense.

PBRNUT said:

I will be definitely interested in the end result, I am looking for a camping brew. I think everyone would like something like this(alot of females), along with my mulled apple wine(campfire treat) I am not a wine fan, but it is really good. This is a recipe I got from the Brown County Winery.

Click to expand...

I like where your head's at...

Maybe a dumb question...but how do you pasteurize the fruit?

I heated it to 160 and held it there for about 20 minutes.

You could do it easier by adding it to your wort at the end of the boil, if it's frozen then it will lower your boil pot temp quite a bit, make sure it stays around 150-170 and don't cool your wort for 20 minutes or so after your boil. This is what I would have done, but I don't have a big enough brew pot so I did my fruit in a seperate 2 gallons on the side.

When you took the measurement, the fruit sugar was still bound to the fruit and not mixed into the wort like the grain sugars.

You'll get about 0.008 - 0.010 gravity points per pound per gallon. So for 6 lbs of fruit in a 5 gallon batch, you're s.g. will be 0.010 - 0.012 higher.

Thanks for the info.

Just an update, as of 3am friday morining it is down to 2 bubbles per minute.

Good night.

Alright, after almost 6 (5 1/2) days, the hydro reading is down to 1.015 for two days now. I just transfered to secondary, but in the process, lost almost a gallon of brew.

With all of the fruit in the primary, there was a THICK bed of trub not to mention some fruit skin floating on top. After clogging a few times, my auto-siphon began to pick up some trub, and it became more trouble than it was worth to try to get any more out of the primary. The trub made up at least 1/2 gallon and the floating stuff a little more, so I really only lost about 1/4 gallon of drinkable brew, not too bad of a loss.

I was worried about all of the headroom that I now have in my secondary because of the loss of that much brew, but I got a few bubbles a minute for a few minutes after I transfered, so I imagine the degassing created enough of a CO2 bed to protect it from any oxygenation.

The taste from the hydro tube wasn't as fruity as I thought it would be, but it tasted pretty damn good for a hydro sample. I actually like the amount of fruity flavor I have right now, and the aroma is subtle, but very nice. It's a very nice hazy red, I'm excited to see what this one will look like after clearing up a little.

Wow!! That looks fantastic

Been a little warm lately, so I built myself a nice little insulated box to keep the temps down, got it at around 65-68 now. Hasn't cleared much from what I can tell, but it has a while to go still.

I am wondering about when and why to use pectic enzyme. I have read that it will help to break down the fruit and provide a clearer beer, but what if you don't care if it is a little hazy. There isn't any fruit but a small amount of cherry skins that is visible in the brew (you can barely see them in pic 2 floating on top), and it is a wheat, so a little haziness woudln't be a problem. I am just wondering what the advantages are to using pectic enzyme.

The one time I've used it, I used it in the water I pasturized my fruit in. I don't know if that is right or wrong.

Looks pretty interesting, I would love to hear how it turns out.

Well, tomorrow will be 10 days in secondary. I've had it at 62 for the last 5 days or so and it isn't getting any clearer , so I'm thinking about bottling within the next couple of days.

I just got done taking off the labels of 2 cases of bottles, what a hassle that is. Oh well, it's worth it for my brews.

I may have some extra time tomorrow, so for no other reason other than the fact that I am a busy guy, bottling day might come tomorrow. It looks basically the same as it did when I took the pictures, but I will have some more tomorow along with the final recipe and procedures I followed throughout the brewing process. Only a few more weeks till I know how it really turns out, it's exciting.

Meanwhile I just started a mocha porter that smells amazing, smelled like fresh brewed coffee while It was boiling.

Finally bottled yesterday after 13 days in secondary. Looked pretty much the same as it did when I took the pictures, a little lighter in color but the haziness never cleared. I didn't want to add anything to clear it out, and I don't really care as long as it's just an asthetic issue, it still looks great The bed on the bottom of the carboy had a nice layer of clean looking white yeast with a purple layer of trub on top.

Gravity still at 1.015, not sure how much sugar was imparted by the fruit, but SG was measured at 1.054 + .010 - .012 with the fruit sugar that was not yet broken down = 1.064 - 10.66. ABV 6.7 - 6.9%. Came out a little strong, but I ended up with pretty good attenuation from the yeast.

Flavor was really nice at bottling. It has a very nice smooth fruit flavor, but you can still taste a little bit of the malt behind, so it isn't completely taken over by the fruit. The yeast stays out of the way even without any bottle conditioning yet, it produced a very clean profile never having gone above 70 degrees during the process. The body is smooth and creamy, I can't wait for this one to be ready to drink, and perhaps after some cold conditioning in the bottle it will clear a little more. Final product pictures, and my analysis of the process to come in a few weeks. I havn't ever done a fruit any other way, but I will let everyone know how well this way works for me, and how satisfied I am with the result, so far I am very pleased. Cheers

Since you used wheat, it's not going to clear very much, so I wouldn't worry about that. It looks good, though, and I hope it turns out great!

Yeah, pectin is just to keep it from getting too cloudy, from what I know. But I don't typically care about such trivialities. Doubly so if it's a wheat beer.

God, the color of that stuff is just badass. It looks like a big ol' jug of Pepto. I wanna do a berry brew when they get in season. We're taking part in a mennonite fruit/vegetable cooperative this year, so we may just have tons of berries at some point.

I would have liked to have used fresh berries, but there was such a better selection of frozen and I didn't want to have just plain ol' raspberry. Not to mention that frozen were 1/4 the price, but if I had my hands on some good fresh berries, I would use them instead. I thawed them out and made a puree anyway.

That looks terrific. Can't wait to hear how it tastes when its conditioned, carbed & chilled. We've just thinned our strawberry patch -- about 10'x20'. If all goes well, we should have strawberries up to our ears. Can't wait to brew a strawberry wheat

I'd also like to know how this turns out, might be brewing it up if it's a good one.

My multi-berry sasion looked exactly like that...also pointed out some bad spots on my bucket, so it's encouraged me to go buy some new equipment.

One neat/odd thing I found was that strawberries did not change the color of the brew one single bit. The red was drained from the actual berry, but the brew was still a pale golden color. The raspberry brew just destroyed the color of the beer (and my bucket). I still can't get the strawberry odor out of that fermentation bucket.

Try 1 cup of bleach in 5 gallons of water and soak it over night. That's supposed to get most smells out of a plastic fermentor.

Or try the oxyclean thing. I don't know the ratio for that.

If either don't get it, its time for a new fermentor.

Switch to glass! No lingering smells!

I pitched the question of how to do a light green apple taste (and NOT the acetaldehyde off-flavor that gave the idea) into a double chocolate stout; my question: could I just add a few pounds of of cut peeled apples at flameout to get that taste or would the high temps kill the flavor or I should add it at pitching, but am concerned with wild yeasties and bacteria if not heated.

I was sitting with the local micro brewmaster and the brewmaster of a larger nearby town. They both said the taste would be killed, by the heat.

Their rule of thumb was the 50/50 rule: use 50% fruit to 50% extract, because a lot fruit can cause a lot of possible problems.

I recently made a belgian wheat beer with a gallon of apple juice added to it. It's pretty tasty, but I don't know if you could find green apple juice. Everything I saw was just generic red delicious, I believe, although the label on the stuff I ended up buying had green and red apples on it.

You can add it at flame out, or anywhere above 160F and keep it there for 20 minutes before cooling. Then transfer it all to the primary. Or you could pasturize it by itself at 160F for 20 minutes and add it to either the primary or secondary.

Unless you are doing lambics, you probably want to stay below 1.2 lbs of fruit per gallon of wort. I would think you would have to use 0.6 to 0.75 lbs per gallon just to come through both the stout maltiness and chocolate flavors.

Any updates concerning this brew?

Please let us know.

- WW

I just remembered this thread. Never wrapped it up.

The beer came out good, I've only got 12 or so left. Next time I will probably add some lactose because it could have been a little sweeter, and cluster wasn't the best hop choice.

It still has never cleared but is well aged by now and is actually one of the best fruit beers i have ever had. Even though it is lacking somewhat in sweetness, many people have said that that is what they dislike about other fruit beers, so this one is right up there alley.

I also never got a lot of carbonation on this one, and it probably would have been good a little on the higher side of the carb level, so more priming sugar next time, probably 1 cup of corn sugar.

I have actually done a lot of re-working the recipe, here is the new one. The first is good, and if you would prefer a little less sweetness, thats the way to go, I am going to try to up the sweetness a little though. This should be great, I'm going to also try it with a pond of munich instead of the lactose to see how the malty sweetness makes it. The malt is broken up because I add half at the end to aid in hop utilization.

Type: Extract
Batch Size: 5.50 gal
Boil Size: 3.00 gal
Boil Time: 60 min

Ingredients

Amount Item Type % or IBU

6.00 lb Fruit - Raspberry, other fruits (0.0 SRM) Adjunct 45.3 %

3.00 lb Wheat Liquid Extract (8.0 SRM) Extract 22.6 %
3.00 lb Wheat Liquid Extract (8.0 SRM) Extract 22.6 %

0.50 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain 3.8 %
0.50 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 3.8 %

1.00 oz Hallertauer Hersbrucker [4.00%] (60 min) Hops 15.0 IBU

0.25 lb Milk Sugar (Lactose) (0.0 SRM) Sugar 1.9 %

1 Pkgs American Wheat Ale (Wyeast Labs #1010) Yeast-Ale

Est Original Gravity: 1.061 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.012 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 6.4 %

I can't believe I never mentioned that in any of my replies. I used a pound of lactose in my raspberry wit. It wasn't sweet at all before, and it came out just right afterwards. I also used Centennial, which seems to fit nicely. Just my two cents.

looks great! Love that color!

sounds good