Pasteurization

If I am making a fruit beer, with real raspberries, how do I go about this? I have heard that about 30 minutes at 170F will work well? Any concern about tannins or anything of that nature? I am brewing this in the coming weeks, and I am really excited!!

Brewpilot

That's what I did, although not for 30 minutes. Ten or fifteen should be plenty. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there are no tannins in raspberries to worry about.

From what I've read, you should freeze them first too. Then thaw and crush them. Freezing destroys cells walls and allows for better extraction.

I've got a Cherry Wit planned next and that's the procedure I'm following.

170F is fairly high for pateurization of the fruit. You will be getting close to setting the pectins in the fruit and you'll end up with hazy beer. This haze won't affect taste so don't worry about it if you don't care about the look of the beer. There are two ways of dealing with it one is adding pectic enzyme to the fermenter and the other is to pasteurize the fruit at a lower temp ~150F will suffice. Also, adding them to secondary will help because there is alcohol around.
Have you considered using oregon canned fruit purre? Those are dump and go and are supposed to give great results.

Devil's Advocate: why not just soak the fruit in a little vodka for a day?

The boiling (and the freezing) destoys the cellular structure pretty much completely. You're adding mush to the fermenter. Seems to me that this can only help with flavor extraction.

These are home grown raspberries, so that is why I am using them... 150F works for me! I need to get this brew done and aging so that I can start my first otameal nut stout!!! I am really excited about that!

Brewpilot

Walker-san said:

Devil's Advocate: why not just soak the fruit in a little vodka for a day?

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Good idea, then you can drink the vodka and become a girl-drink drunk.

Normal pasteurization temps start at 140F and go up from there. Generally speaking, the higher the temperature, the shorter the amount of time the product is held at that temperature, and the more completely resident organisms (and delicat flavor compounds) are destroyed. Milk that is held at 140F for 30 min is considered pasteurized, if it's held at 160F for 5 minutes its ultra-pasteurized. (You can go higher but then you start to hit Parmalet territory ). 150F was probably a good compromise. (And I'm not suggesting cooking raspberries for half an hour either.)

70% Ethanol is a great disinfectant. You just need to have them in the alcohol for at least 20min to kill wild yeast, bacteria and Viruses. Bacardi 151 is 75.5% Alcohol so that will work well.

Everclear is 190 proof (95% alcohol) and it's cheap.

I like to pasteurize stuff at about 160 for 10-15 minutes. It works, it doesn't require more chemicals, and it will soften the fruit.