Planning a fruit beer

I am planning on making a fruit beer soon, probably a peach. It's not something I have done before (only have made 2 beers so far, both stout) and I wanted to see what are the common errors when making a fruit beer. I am planning on doing a sour mash to give it some lambic characteristics and going with very light malt (probably mostly syrup based plus the sour mash wort. I have done partial mashing on one stout but don't have the equipment to do a full mash) It's going to be a 5 gallon batch. I assume the peaches should go into the secondary fermenter, any suggestions on how much peaches to use, how to prepare them, or anything else would be greatly appreciated.

Peaches are a surprisingly mild-flavored fruit. I haven't made a peach beer yet, but if it were me, I'd start with 6-8 pounds for 5gal and be prepared to add more to taste. Commercial examples are pretty mild on the peach. Eric's Ale from Deschutes is a oak-aged peach sour- I think it's delicious, but both the oak and the peach are secondary perceptions in the beer.

If you sour mash, make sure to cover the mash with saran wrap, foil, or anything to keep extra oxygen out. Lacto is found naturally on grain, as I'm sure you know, but it is inhibited by oxygen. Enteric bacteria are also found on grain and die quickly in a normal mash and boil, but they'll give you vomit and garbage smells when they get oxygen in a sour mash.

Babylon said:

any suggestions on how much peaches to use, how to prepare them, or anything else would be greatly appreciated.

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If you are starting with a low-gravity lightly hopped beer (a blonde equivalent) I'd start with 3-4lbs of fruit or puree. You can taste it before bottling and add some extract if it's not fruity enough. (I don't like extract but to each their own.)

If it's puree I'd just pour it in the primary fermentor and leave it. If it's fresh fruit I'd heat it up to at least 170 to sanitize it, mash it up (with a sanitized spoon or something) and put it in secondary then rack the beer on top.

I've done an Apricot Wheat that is absolutly delicious! My fav homebrew by far. I'm usually a hop man myself. I used 6lb Muntons dry wheat, and I recommend 3 lbs of Oregon Apricot Puree that you add in the secondary. Used Wyeast American Wheat 1010.

Oregon Puree in the can is already pasturized, so no worries for the secondary.

My first batch i added 1.5lb of the puree during the last 5 min boil. I then added the second 1.5lb of puree just before i pitched the yeast around 72*. This turned out GREAT. After brewing another batch using all 3 in the secondary, much more Apricot flavor came out. Even better!

Wife loves it, and great desert beer especially during the summer.

Remember a puree profile is fairly sour. Taste a bit before you add. The wheat really helps balance the puree.

I;m still new, learned a bunch from being on this site, Props to Homebrewtalk.com!

Good Luck!

Brewing fruit beer at home would be a very good idea, though not easy, is definitely a rewarding task. Good luck to that and taste the success.

Ive had the best results using fruit with home made purees. If you want to pasteurize it, that's relatively simple to do as well. Just put the puree in a small pot. Put that pot of puree into a larger pot with boiling water and have the puree stay at 145 degrees F for 30 minutes. Also, with light fruits , such as peaches, I normally use 1.5 lbs (of fruit) per gallon and then puree the crap out of it. Freeze it, then thaw for secondary. Hope this helps!

be sure to not boil the puree as pectin will get into the final product.

I don't think syrup is necessary -- a light wheat beer (50/50 or 40/60 wheat to pilsner or pale malt) would be sufficient. That would also be more to style with lambics.

However, as mentioned here and your other thread in the lambic section, peaches offer mild flavor in beer. You may want to do a peach/apricot mixture.

They break down fairly quickly in beer so you've also got to watch out for it clogging your racking/bottling tubing.

I've done quite a few fruit brews for friends and family. I have tried all sorts of methods but I find that slicing the fruit, tossing in Vodka and freezing for a minumum of three days works very well for me.

If you're going the peach route, I'd recommend using s-05 as the yeast and fermenting it cool, say around 58ish. It throws off peach flavors at that temperature and would help add to the final flavor.

Looking at the info I can find on s-05 it seems to be a very high attenuating yeast that dries a beer out a lot. Seems to me that would lead to it eating up all the peach flavor because it would go crazy on the sugars, but I may be misunderstanding the ideas.