Hi Hiphop! First, let me tell you right up front that I'm going to speak heresy for the fruity beer purists out there. I've brewed with purées before, as well as real fruit, real vanilla, etc. What I've found is the results are not as good, or as predictable, as using a flavor concentrate. There are several brands that produce really good flavors that you can add to your beer. When using real fruit or purées, you generally add them to a secondary. They typically have a lot of sugar, which restarts the fermentation process, and tends to dry out the beer. You might get some of the fruit flavor, but any sweetness gets fermented out and it may be really dry and/or sour. Using a flavor concentrate, however, you can finish your beer, then carefully add a measured amount to a known sample size until you hit the flavor profile you (or your significant other) really likes. Then you just scale up the dose to the amount of beer you want to flavor. Another benefit is you already know how the beer tastes before you doctor it up. If it's a crappy beer to start with, adding flavoring (or fruit/purée) just makes it a fruity, crappy beer. Anyway, I hope this helps and I wish you the best of luck on your brew. You've chosen a really good blank slate to start with as this beer is one of the best. Let me know if I can give you any more information. Ed
I have right now these malts: Pale Ale, Chrystal, Munich, Amber
