Mango IPA

Per my girlfriends request, I'm going to take a stab at a mango ipa. Here is what I have put together so far...

lb oz
7 0 Light DME
2 0 American Two-row Pale
0 8 Munich Malt
0 4 Honey Malt

1oz centennial at 60 min (31.1 IBU)
1oz cascade at 20 min (13.8 IBU)
1oz Amarillo at 10 min (10 IBU)

.5 oz citra 5 min
2+ Oz Citra Dry hop

White Labs East Coast Ale (WLP008)


How many lbs of mango would you recommend adding to secondary? I'm not going for a "hint" of mango. I would like this to be quite noticeable.

Thanks,

Chad

YEah citra.. that's what I was thinking as soon as I saw mango. Tropical. Do you have access to fruit purees? You could make it but cleaning the fruit can be tedious. Especially because mangos are slippery. but you should be good with a couple pounds of puree if you want a full mango flavor. A week in the secondary should be enough.

how much flavor would a mango puree add? I currently have a double IPA thats in its 2nd week of fermentation thinking mango taste would go well with it, and how much puree would you add to a 5gal batch?

it should add a lot because it's esentially ground fruit. I would suggest something coarse though. I would think 2# is plenty for five gallons.

It is too far to get to my homebrew store just for puree. I'm going to suck it up and use fresh.

do you think the local grocery stores would carry a mango puree or for that matter anyother fruit puree?

Not likely. But if you can find some good ripe fruit it's as easy as throwing it in the food processor for a sec.

wish i had a food processor, would a blender work alright if not maybe ill just get some warm water 130-140degrees and soak the fresh mangos in it before adding to the fermenter

cmmcdonn said:

Per my girlfriends request, I'm going to take a stab at a mango ipa. Here is what I have put together so far...

lb oz
7 0 Light DME
2 0 American Two-row Pale
0 8 Munich Malt
0 4 Honey Malt

1oz centennial at 60 min (31.1 IBU)
1oz cascade at 20 min (13.8 IBU)
1oz Amarillo at 10 min (10 IBU)

.5 oz citra 5 min
2+ Oz Citra Dry hop

White Labs East Coast Ale (WLP008)

How many lbs of mango would you recommend adding to secondary? I'm not going for a "hint" of mango. I would like this to be quite noticeable.

Thanks,

Chad

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hey Chad bra, a while back my wife who is Filipino and eats the hell out of mangos asked about the same thing for a brew. I remember being bothered by pectin issues and of course mango has alot of sugar to ferment out. after a podna of mine did a pineapple blonde and it came out sour as hell, I didn't want to chance the mango. I've done figs, banana, orange, lemon, blueberries, and blackberries. and the only problem I had was with the fig. fermented out hard. hot damn near 9 % abv. they have mad amounts of sugar. pectin haze was horrible too. some pectic enzyme coulda knocked it down. just like minimal additives. oh well, just a lil info for ya bra. God Bless

would a blender work alright

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sure. You might have to water it down so the puree doesn't stick to the sides. Thin it out with a little beer if you don't want to add too much water.

found this at meijers today wondering if this would be a good substitute for a mango puree?

http://www.meijer.com/s/favorit-swiss-preserves-peach-mango-6-jars-12-3-oz-ea/_/R-176835

The preserves have pectin in there, which will cloud up the beer something fierce. If there's any preservatives at all (I'm not sure what the labeling requirements are for preservatives), it will inhibit yeast growth.

Personally, I'd give a look in the freezer aisle. I cook with mangoes a LOT, and when I'm feeling lazy i'll just get frozen mangoes; they're already in my freezer for making smoothies (why no, I'm not a hippie), and they're peeled and cut into chunks. In my cooking experience they're mooshier than a fresh mango and not quite as tasty, but still plenty good in a thirty-minute stir fry.

Either way (fresh or frozen), my suggestion would be if at all possible to split your batch. Put a TON of mangoes into half, and secondary the other half as normal. Then blend the two halves together in different ratios to see what resulting ratio is best. That way you know how strong to make it when you do it next time.

An alternative, and something I've been playing with for a lot of exotic additions lately, is to just use something like Mango Extract (google it) and add a drop or two to a bottle of finished beer. I've been doing that with vanilla in a stout and lemongrass in a rye, both are giving me good ideas about flavor strength and dosing rates that will guide me in the next step: the split batch method.

thats what i was thinking not to use it, looks like im gonna try to buy some fresh mangos peel them and use a blender to make my own puree

from other threads that I have read. the best thing to do with fruit is thaw it (if frozen) and place directly into the carboy for secondary fermentation. Though you should place it in the carboy before the beer. I am not sure how long you should let it sit, id say 7-10 days. i am doing a 5 gallon blonde ale and fermenting it with 5 lbs of blueberries (to give you an idea on the amount)

"buy a man a beer, let him drink for a day. teach a man how to make beer, let him drink for life."

thats what im gonna do, i went to the store bought 15mangos peeled them took the pits out cut up into little squares put them in a sanitized bowl in the freezer tomorrow im gonna put them in the carboy and rack right ontop of them

pfooti said:

Either way (fresh or frozen), my suggestion would be if at all possible to split your batch. Put a TON of mangoes into half, and secondary the other half as normal. Then blend the two halves together in different ratios to see what resulting ratio is best. That way you know how strong to make it when you do it next time..

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The only problem with this is there is no way to accurately recreate the results. You have for example 5 gal with LOTS of fruit and five gal with none. What if 3.5 gal of "fruit" beer with 5 gal of "regular" is the ideal? You can't tell how much fruit to add to a full batch. Do what you plan and from there you can change it next time. No matter what, you still have homebrew to drink.

Be real careful about infection with adding fresh fruit to your beer. I made a strawberry blonde once and it was the nastiest stuff I ever had because of the infection. Either freeze the mangos, boil them, or blend them up with some star San. That should do the trick. Good luck

Double_D said:

The only problem with this is there is no way to accurately recreate the results. You have for example 5 gal with LOTS of fruit and five gal with none. What if 3.5 gal of "fruit" beer with 5 gal of "regular" is the ideal? You can't tell how much fruit to add to a full batch. Do what you plan and from there you can change it next time. No matter what, you still have homebrew to drink.

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The benefit of doing a split batch is that you can easily experiment with dosing levels without having to rebrew as you dial in the recipe. You can easily alter the effective amount of mango in your recipe by changing the blend rate, and you end up with a really strong recipe for your second brew instead of for your fourth or fifth one.

If you put 5 lbs into 2.5 gallons of your brew and a ratio of 2:1 regular:normal is the right taste, then you know your next batch should have about 3.3 lbs of mangoes into your full 5 gallon brew. Double the amount of mangoes going int half the batch (so 5 into 2.5 is as 10 into 5) and then adjust by the mix rate (1/3 dilution rate), so 10/3 = 3.3 lbs of mangoes. I'm sure there's a simple stoichiometry-style calculation for that, but I tend to think through stepwise.

You can blend either at bottling time (make four or five different mini-mixes into the bottling bucket) or just at drinking time by opening two bottles and pouring into a glass.

That strategy will likely leave you with some leftover beer that you couldn't blend properly, but as you said, it's probably still drinkable just not optimal.

Its done, i got 15 fresh mango peeled and cut into small chunks i put the in a sanitize bowl which then went into the freezer overnight to kill any of the bacteria, i put them on the bottom of my fermenter and racked the my ipa directly ontop of them. If freezing didnt kill the bacteria the 7.2%abv my ipa currently has will.

checked on my mango ipa which i added fresh cut mango to yesterday. Is it normal for fermentation to restart again? It makes since as the yeast are eating away the fruits sugars how will this effect my ABV%

I tell ya, i did a wheat one time and I added around 4lbs of figs to the secondary. they spiked the abv up to damn near 9%. it was supposed to be around 6. it was line wine. lol mango has alot of sugar so I can't promise nothin cause I haven't used mango but it should raise it a bit.

Yeah, it is altogether possible that the sugar in the mango will end up getting refermented. I've no clue what the sugar content per pound of mango is.

I've found in general though that transferring to secondary often gives my apparent fermentation a tiny bump for a day or two; yeast gets resuspended and some carbon dioxide drops out of solution when it gets jostled (which only looks like fermentation as it's activity in the airlock).

Definitely one of those "relax, don't worry..." things though- see how it tastes in a bit and modify your later recipe to suit (possibly reducing the OG of your next batch to account for the extra sugar).

I looked at the carboy today and noticed that my fruit has risen to the top of the beer, should i be pushing this fruit back down with a sterlized stick or something? My fear is the exposed fruit above the liquid level will cause infection everthough everything was sanitized before entering the beer

Gordzilla said:

I looked at the carboy today and noticed that my fruit has risen to the top of the beer, should i be pushing this fruit back down with a sterlized stick or something? My fear is the exposed fruit above the liquid level will cause infection everthough everything was sanitized before entering the beer

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i tried to make some kiwi wine one time and the fruit all floated to the top. the wine ended up being spoiled but that is probably because of other reasons.
good luck with the mango flavor

Gordzilla said:

I looked at the carboy today and noticed that my fruit has risen to the top of the beer, should i be pushing this fruit back down with a sterlized stick or something? My fear is the exposed fruit above the liquid level will cause infection everthough everything was sanitized before entering the beer

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I wouldn't fuss with it too much myself. Opening it too often and prodding to get buoyant fruit back down will just end up exposing it to unnecessary oxygen, which for an IPA in particular could distort the flavors you're shooting for. Plus, repeat openings are precisely what could expose the fruit to the infectious substances that you're concerned about; if you added a sanitized product to a sanitary environment, the infection can only come from too much exposure after the fact .

awesome had that feeling in my stomach but their is always concern as im new to this hobby, cant wait to bottle this next week the ipa had a great taste before adding the mango i think it will only get better after time

Sounds like a great project and I'm looking forward to hearing the results. I'll probably start my own after hearing your reports. If I had gotten on this thread sooner I'd have recommended finding a DFH Aprihop clone and substituting mango. Man, I love that beer, and I like mangoes way more than apricots.

After all your posts, I'm going to buy 8lb of mango in hopes it will land me 5lb of puree in the end. I will be sure to freeze it.

I'm not going through the trouble of splitting the batch because either it will not have enough flavor and turn out to be a great citra dryhopped ipa, or it will have a ton of flavor and be just what i'm looking for.

Thanks for the input guys. And thanks to gordzilla for "taking the reigns" on my thread.

no problem, after i bought my mangos and tried it, i noticed that the local grocery store had frozen bags of mangos 12oz for 1.99 probably a better and cheaper way to go you could just smash the frozen mangos up and put them in the fermenter

It might be worth noting that you should probably verify the ingredients on the bag for frozen mangoes. They could very well include additional sugar or other preservatives to aid in their preservation. I have no experience with them myself, but figured it would be something to check.

i looked at the bag it didnt mention all preservs, but if your adding them to a secondary 3weeks into fermentation your really just looking for flavors anyways and secondary fermentation would just be a little bonus to your abv

Gordzilla said:

Its done, i got 15 fresh mango peeled and cut into small chunks i put the in a sanitize bowl which then went into the freezer overnight to kill any of the bacteria, i put them on the bottom of my fermenter and racked the my ipa directly ontop of them. If freezing didnt kill the bacteria the 7.2%abv my ipa currently has will.

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Freezing bacteria in a home freezer doesn't kill them. It just puts them in suspended animation. Alcohol should suffice.

i would go with jumex mango nectar if i was you. they sell that at grocery stores around where im at and i wouldnt doubt it would be sold around you.

So, how did the IPA turn out? I'm extremely curious...

A little old but I will throw in some info anyway. I helped my old girl friend brew an Imperial Mango Hefeweizen. We peeled and cut 6 mangoes. Put in the freezer to break the cell walls (from the water expanding, bursting the cell walls) making it easier for the yeast to eat up. We then thawed them and mushed them all up, put in a mesh bag, and added to the fermenter. It started fermenting pretty steadily right away. It ended up with just a very slight hint of mango, I assume from the sugars being fermented out. She wanted a little more but still loved it, as did everyone else.

Yum!

So how did this beer turn out?

I actually forgot about this thread. As the thread originator, I feel a small obligation to post my results especially since so many people offered some fantastic input.

I followed the recipe exactly as in the original post, and ended up using a total of 5.5 lb of mango.

I used 2lb of frozen mango cubes in the primary. Then I peeled and lightly pureed (couple taps of the magic bullet) 3.5 lb of fresh mangoes, and added to secondary in a hop bag.

The taste is out of this world. There is no "hint" of mango here folks. It's extremely mango forward, but there are enough ibus to keep it balanced for my (and my girlfriend's) tastes.

I did lose a little over a gallon to absorption and sediment, so my 5oz packet of priming sugar may have been a little more than what I should have used, but I think the added carbonation makes the beer even more enjoyable.

Thanks to everyone who provided their input to the thread.

-Chad

Trader joe's had mango puree and chunks that puree'd really easily.

Now this sounds like a brew I would like to try. Glad you resurrected the thread