FishNChips
Active Member
So this was actually my first experience working with fruit, but I was very happy with how it turned out considering I kind of came up with a plan from scratch.
After removing the skin from 8 pounds of frozen fruit (kiwi, peaches, and apricots; took me about 45 min), I pureed gently and put fruit in mason jars along with a 1/8 tsp pectic enzyme, then pressure cooked the jars until internal jar temperature was 160F. I figure the mason jars help keep in the aromatics of the fruit during the heating, as well as preserve those precious juices. You only need to maintain this temperature for 15 seconds to pasteurize (flash pasteurization), but it takes about 25 minutes to get them that hot from frozen. There was quite a bit of juice in the jars after heating, no doubt the pectic enzyme helped with this.
(side note: I considered filling the pore space in the jar with vodka and let sit overnight, but i was concerned that adding the vodka into the beer would hurt the flavor, and you can't pour off the vodka without losing juices.)
Anyway, I used a hop bag with holes cut along the top to make a long draw string. Inserted the hop bag into the fermenter, and rubber banded the top. Then I simply poured in the fruit puree and juice after cooling and lowered the bag down when done. The draw string will make for easy removal later. Super easy, and will greatly help when siphoning to bottling bucket!
After removing the skin from 8 pounds of frozen fruit (kiwi, peaches, and apricots; took me about 45 min), I pureed gently and put fruit in mason jars along with a 1/8 tsp pectic enzyme, then pressure cooked the jars until internal jar temperature was 160F. I figure the mason jars help keep in the aromatics of the fruit during the heating, as well as preserve those precious juices. You only need to maintain this temperature for 15 seconds to pasteurize (flash pasteurization), but it takes about 25 minutes to get them that hot from frozen. There was quite a bit of juice in the jars after heating, no doubt the pectic enzyme helped with this.
(side note: I considered filling the pore space in the jar with vodka and let sit overnight, but i was concerned that adding the vodka into the beer would hurt the flavor, and you can't pour off the vodka without losing juices.)
Anyway, I used a hop bag with holes cut along the top to make a long draw string. Inserted the hop bag into the fermenter, and rubber banded the top. Then I simply poured in the fruit puree and juice after cooling and lowered the bag down when done. The draw string will make for easy removal later. Super easy, and will greatly help when siphoning to bottling bucket!
