Fruit beers, pasteurize or fresh?

I just bought some sour and sweet canned cherries. I'd like to puree the fruit, boil it, strain the cherry syrup, and then add to beer. This way I can extract all the goodness from the fruit without the fuss of dealing with whole cherries in the secondary.

What would be the consequences of pasteurizing fruit (or boiling) before adding to fermenters as opposed to adding the whole fruit to the secondary?

Thanks for revisiting this question.

pectic haze, for one...

It's a pretty dark beer (30 srm) so I'm not too concerned about clarity, mainly the difference in flavor.

You can get tannins off the skins if you leave them on. May or may not be desirable, depening upon what you want the beer to taste like.

Puree and strain, add at last 10 minutes of boil will work out very well.

I made a cherry wit with some homegrown cherries and used this method. No problems. For reference, I used 2 pounds of cherries in a 5-gallon batch and it had a very noticable but still light flavor. Translucent pink (and hazy from the yeast) like a strawberry-kiwi Snapple kind of color.


I haven't tried a fruit addition in secondary yet.

Check some of the procedures for fruit beers in the recipe section. Most people are adding fruit to the secondary. I think the yeast activity in the primary kills off some of the flavor. I have added 60 ozs of raspberry puree at flameout and in the end the flavor wasn't very strong. On a new batch, I added 48 ozs of pasteurized raspberries to the secondary. From what I have tasted so far, the fruit flavor is much stronger.

Firstly, your cherries (if they are canned) have already been pasturized, so they might produce haze. Pectic enzyme can be used, but I don't deal with that stuff.

When I want a clear fruit beer, I stick with time as my finning. It's not uncommon for me to have two or three clearing sessions (secondary fermentations) before I'm satisfied with the clarity of my beer. It's up to you, but I don't like adding anything to my beer that doesn't NEED to be added.

May the Yeast be With You!