Puree vs. Frozen fruit

Up to this point, all my melomels have been made with fruit juices, but I am now planning on making a fuller-bodied raspberry melomel. It appears I can use either a raspberry puree from Vintner's Harvest, or I can used frozen raspberries from my local grocery store. So I have several questions.

1) What would be the pros and cons of one product over the other?

2)How would I need to prepare the frozen raspberries before using.

3) And is the canned puree pasteurized, or would I need to treat it with campden tablets?

Thanks!

Don't know some of the stuff. Like the the puree.

Now its fair to point out, that the majority of purees would just be blitzed fruit. That slashes the seeds, which can cause bitterness when exposed to fermentation.

It seems that the best method, is either to freeze your own fruit or buy pre-frozen. Then defrost the lot.

As for using the fruit ? It depends on what you're aiming to make and how fruit you want the taste. I've learned to put a max of 25% of the fruit into primary, the rest goes into secondary.

With raspberry, it can become overly dominant in taste, so either has to be made lightly or mixed with other fruit (raspberry and peach go well together).

The tinned puree may well have been pasteurised, but I'd have thought it would say that on the packaging.......

By blitzed, do you mean irradiated?

I know in the states many fruits and veggies are treated with radiation (apples especially) to kill bacteria - I also wondered about using grocery store fruit in mead making.

Personally, I think I am going to stick to farm fresh stuff - luckily I live in a decent area for that.. at least I can wash off the pesticides?

MrSweet said:

By blitzed, do you mean irradiated?

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think by blitzed he means put in a food process or or blender of sorts and chewed up until it is a smooth puree

I've used either without any problems. Puree, I just dump in, as it has been pasteurized while canning. I use Oregon purees and they have zero seed particles. I think they use a rotating screen press to crush and de-seed. Frozen fruit, I like to thaw and heat to ~160F for 15 minutes. It pasteurizes the fruit and ruptures the cells more.

Thanks for everyone's comments and advice!

david_42 said:

Frozen fruit, I like to thaw and heat to ~160F for 15 minutes. It pasteurizes the fruit and ruptures the cells more.

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Curious though, what survives the freezing process that would need to be pasteurized away?

even at 160F alot of good volitile stuff can be steamed away

For what it's worth, I have used fresh fruit for both meads and beers before with no trouble. I wash the fruit carefully and toss out the questionable bits. So, I don't think it's a choice between just frozen store-bought fruit and a prepackaged puree. There are other options out there.

TheBrewingMedic said:

Curious though, what survives the freezing process that would need to be pasteurized away?

even at 160F alot of good volitile stuff can be steamed away

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Lots of wild yeasts are tough enough to survive freezing and all yeast spores will.
Boil-off of flavors is much less of an issue with fruit than with hops.