Addng cranberry juice to mash?

[joey46987]

I know that the traditional way to add fruit to a beer is in the secondary but has anyone tried adding fruit (whole, chopped, pureed, or juice) into the mash? I am brewing a pumpkin spice beer on friday and will be adding pumpkin to the mash. didnt know if anyone else has tried adding anything other types of fruit to the mash.

here is the recipe:

10# Munich Malt
1# Aromatic Malt
1# Special B
1oz Strisslespalt (60min) 12.6 IBU
1oz Strisslespalt (15min) 6.2 IBU
Wyeast 1272 American Ale II

Mashing at 160*

 

[fsr_racer]

I'm pretty new and have not gotten as far as adding fruit to the mash, or even fermentation. Everything I've read says that you will lose a lot of what the fruit has to offer, flavor wise, during the boil, but have no first hand experience. Many experienced brewers would recommend adding various flavorings when you are ready to pour that first glass. I've only recently begun to add a little juice to my mead when I'm ready to drink it, just to see if I want to attempt a recipe and, if so, in what ratio. I mixed 1oz of 100% organic, no sugar added cranberry juice to 3oz of dry light mead and it was very overpowering. Next time I'll try it with a sweet mead.

 

[Cape Brewing]

I think adding cranberry juice (especially juice) to a mash is a very bad idea. Cranberry juice will, I would imagine, drmaatically throw off the PH levels in the mash and probably do very bad things to your conversion. That is why folks add things in the fermenters, so the PH levels in the mash don't get thrown way off. Pumpkin is an exception because it doesn't have the acidity that something like cranberries would have. Pumpkin is also extremely starchy and you're looking to convert that starch into sugars (the whole point of mashing the grains). Fruit isn't starchy... it's already full of sugar so there's not reason to mash it.

I would recommend simply adding any fruit you're going to add in the fermenters. One suggestion (not everyone does it though) would also be to pastuerize your fruit (especially fresh fruit) before adding it to the fermenter to avoid infection... unless you're trying to brew a wild ale.

 

[Darwin18]

I would add any fruit juice in the secondary. If you keg however, you can add potassium sorbate and campden to prevent fermentation if you're trying to back sweeten. That's my process when I'm add apple juice concentrate to my cider.

 

[joey46987]

Good point about the pH with the cranberry juice. Didn't even think about that. Looks like I'll do my usual of throwing a home made spiced cranberry sauce into the bucket after primary fermentation is complete.


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[joey46987]

I am making this beer very malty and mashing high to account for the tartness of the cranberries and thinning of the beer due to the honey in the cranberry sauce. I'll save the potassium sorbate for my Bret cider this winter. Hehe


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