You need to treat fruit additions like making wine from fruit. I will use frozen fruit and mash at pasteurize it at home to save money. The fruit and beer should go into primary together. Add Pectic Enzyme at a rate of 1 table spoon per gallon (helps extract more juice from the fruit), I also add a wine cider yeast alone with my beer yeast. I allow the primary to ferment down to .02 specific gravity from final gravity. Rack the beer and leave the fruit and allow secondary to run for 3 weeks and Final Gravity should be achieved. I then rack again and allow the beer to bulk age for at least 2 months just like you would with wine. I have a blueberry Chocolate Stout recipe located here http://hopville.com/recipe/429989/belgian-dark-strong-ale-recipes/chocolate-blueberry-stout . It uses a lot for fruit, 20 pounds, so it is treated even more like a wine in that it will bulk age for 6 months before kegging. The oak and Chocolate powder goes in when it is bulk aging for 6 month. If you are going to use a lot of fruit you MUST be patient and good things will come to you.
Add fruit to primary or rack beer on top of fruit in secondary
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I've been looking at making a beer resembling NB Frambozen, and I found this:
"Jason, of the New Belgium Brewing Company in Fort Collins, Colorado, has been with NBB for three years. He previously worked at Abita Brewing Company in Abita Springs, Louisiana. He attended the diploma course at the
Siebel Institute.
Frambozen — a fruited brown ale of Belgian origin — was first brewed by New Belgium Brewing Company during the winter of 1992.
Our Frambozen is not a traditional Christmas beer in any sense, but the high gravity makes it a great winter warmer, and the full raspberry flavor gives you a refreshing memory of stopping to snack on wild raspberries during long mid-summer hikes.
If you would like to brew this beer at home, I would shoot for an OG of 1.064. The mash should be roughly 75 percent pale malt, 10 percent Munich malt, 4 percent sugar, 10 percent caramel malt, and 1 percent chocolate malt. Add corn sugar during the boil.
Bittering hops are very low. roughly 20 IBUs. Add these hops early in the boil. We hop very minimally for flavor or aroma as we find that the hops will conflict with the fruit characteristics of the finished beer. Ferment down to 1.014 FG, holding temperatures barely above 68° F. Use a neutral ale yeast (like Wyeast 1056) or a Belgian ale yeast, or even both. After fermentation rack your beer off the yeast and chill it around 30° F if possible.
After 2 weeks of aging, rack your beer (being careful not to transfer any sediment) onto raspberry pulp. This pulp should equal 20% of your total beer volume, so if you are making five gallons of beer, you should rack onto 1 gallon of pulp. If you use raspberry juice, decrease the amount to 10% of your total beer amount (1/2 gallon for a 5-gallon batch). The high alcohol content should eliminate any sanitation concerns but wash the berries as well as possible.
Rack off the raspberry pulp after about two weeks, then let your batch settle again for several days before bottling."
I think this gives enough information to understand exactly how NB's beer is made, and a great starting point to make my own. Cheers!
"Jason, of the New Belgium Brewing Company in Fort Collins, Colorado, has been with NBB for three years. He previously worked at Abita Brewing Company in Abita Springs, Louisiana. He attended the diploma course at the
Siebel Institute.
Frambozen — a fruited brown ale of Belgian origin — was first brewed by New Belgium Brewing Company during the winter of 1992.
Our Frambozen is not a traditional Christmas beer in any sense, but the high gravity makes it a great winter warmer, and the full raspberry flavor gives you a refreshing memory of stopping to snack on wild raspberries during long mid-summer hikes.
If you would like to brew this beer at home, I would shoot for an OG of 1.064. The mash should be roughly 75 percent pale malt, 10 percent Munich malt, 4 percent sugar, 10 percent caramel malt, and 1 percent chocolate malt. Add corn sugar during the boil.
Bittering hops are very low. roughly 20 IBUs. Add these hops early in the boil. We hop very minimally for flavor or aroma as we find that the hops will conflict with the fruit characteristics of the finished beer. Ferment down to 1.014 FG, holding temperatures barely above 68° F. Use a neutral ale yeast (like Wyeast 1056) or a Belgian ale yeast, or even both. After fermentation rack your beer off the yeast and chill it around 30° F if possible.
After 2 weeks of aging, rack your beer (being careful not to transfer any sediment) onto raspberry pulp. This pulp should equal 20% of your total beer volume, so if you are making five gallons of beer, you should rack onto 1 gallon of pulp. If you use raspberry juice, decrease the amount to 10% of your total beer amount (1/2 gallon for a 5-gallon batch). The high alcohol content should eliminate any sanitation concerns but wash the berries as well as possible.
Rack off the raspberry pulp after about two weeks, then let your batch settle again for several days before bottling."
I think this gives enough information to understand exactly how NB's beer is made, and a great starting point to make my own. Cheers!
amaier48
Well-Known Member
okay so after tons of reading, i have been wanting to make a strawberry blonde. i already had the midwest blonde made and it sat in the primary for just over a week... then i went and got me 5lbs of frozen strawberrys.... put them in a pot, put some water in it and turned on the heat, had a thermoeter in it, but i guess i wasent paying close attention and it got a bit warm. almost 200. i figure thats not a huge deal. the problem i ran into, that i did't think about till it was time. how do ya all get those darn strawberrys through the opening in the carboy? it was a pain in the....
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I made a Witbier few months ago and decided to split the batch into 2 batches, 50% Wit and 50% Raspberry Wit. After some readings, here is what I've done :
1. I Bottled 50% of the batch as usual (the Wit)
2. I Mashed ~20oz (600g) of frozen raspberries and put them into a sanitized cotton cheese (I also added a sanitized SS bolt to add weight). My ratio raspberry - beer was 0.5 pound per 1 gallon;
3. I let this sit in primary for a week before bottling.
The result was a very well (woman) balanced beer!
Hope this help a bit !
cheers!
1. I Bottled 50% of the batch as usual (the Wit)
2. I Mashed ~20oz (600g) of frozen raspberries and put them into a sanitized cotton cheese (I also added a sanitized SS bolt to add weight). My ratio raspberry - beer was 0.5 pound per 1 gallon;
3. I let this sit in primary for a week before bottling.
The result was a very well (woman) balanced beer!
Hope this help a bit !
cheers!
Durso81
Active Member
So this is my second time making my raspberry blond and I always rack the beer on top of the raspberries in my secondary.
Beaner1082
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Ive heard to add potassium metasulphites. Does anyone have any experience doing this?
Beaner1082
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- Joined
- Jan 30, 2013
- Messages
- 95
- Reaction score
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Ive heard to add potassium metasulphites. Does anyone have any experience doing this?
I racked my red ale over blackberries to a secondary bucket over a week ago... the red ale had been in primary for just over three weeks.
I just peaked inside the bucket... blackberries are still floating and have lots of color still... is that normal.. I wasn't sure if they sank to the bottom or became whitish?
I just peaked inside the bucket... blackberries are still floating and have lots of color still... is that normal.. I wasn't sure if they sank to the bottom or became whitish?
Audiacious
Active Member
Ok sorry to bring a dead thread back to life, but i cant find what I am looking for. I plan on making a blueberry ale. 1 week in primary and 1 week in secondary with the blueberry puree added. I normally batch prime with table sugar. Question is do I need to cut down on the sugar, and if so by how much? I am using a Mr Beer fermenter for now, so I use about 2.2oz of Table Sugar for the batch. About how much would I then use??
