Anyone have any pointers for fruit beer?

[Fid]

First off... let me preface this by saying that I have searched and searched for solid info on the forums and haven't been able to come up with answers to all of my questions, though admittedly, some of the questions I'm about to ask I have seen discussed to some extent (I'd just like to get some more feedback if possible).. that being said, If I somehow missed a large cache of info regarding this somewhere I will graciously accept your ridiculing about how great the search feature on this site is and how people should use it before posting rethreads (which I agree, its fantastic and I use it daily)

Ok, now that thats out of the way...

SWMBO's birthday is coming up and she has requested that I brew her a birthday beer so we can serve it at her party, something I'm pretty excited about. She's not a huge beer drinker but I recently bought her a 6er of New Belgium's Frambozen and she loved it. I'm not looking to clone this beer by any means, but I am trying to clone the intensity of the fruit flavor in the beer. Anyone have any suggestions on pulling this off?

My plan has been to mix juice in at some point during fermentation. I was thinking either racking the beer on top of the juice in secondary or possibly racking them together in my serving keg. Will one of these options be more likely to produce a more fruit forward beer than the other?

The beer I'm looking to brew is on the lighter side ~13 SRM. Has anyone found any consistency in a beer to juice mixing ratio for lighter beers or is it just something that varies greatly beer to beer and juice to juice? I was thinking of racking a 4 gallon batch onto 1 gallon of juice.

And one final question. Those of you who have used juice... Is there any brand that you have found that seems to work better than others? I'd prefer to use juice, not concentrate, but I'm open to suggestions.

Thanks!

 

[Fid]

After re examining my post I realized that I should clarify that what I'm really after is info on racking the beer with the juice in the serving keg... I've read plenty about racking the two together in primary and secondary. My thought is that by the time my beer reaches the keging state the yeast activity will have subsided substantially and will result in less fermentation of the juice and thereby enhance its the fruitiness. Is this a good assumption? Bad assumption? Will I just end up with some crappy Kool-Aid tasting beer if I do this?

Thanks again

 

[Bru]

There will still be plenty of active yeast which will start fermenting added juice vigorously. Fermentation stops when the sugars are eaten as opposed to reduced yeast activity.

Ive recently kegged a fruit beer and its turned out fantastic. This is what I did :
OG : +-1.035
Grains : 2-row, 10% medium crystal, 20% wheat malt and 2% roast barley
yeast : any ale yeast (I used notty).

I let it ferment for a week and then I added 9lbs (10 gallon batch) of frozen berry mix (strawberries, cherries, blackberries, raspberries) which I boiled for 10 mins and cooled before adding. Boiling was probably not nescesary but I didn't want to take any chances. Fermentation started up again. I let it sit for another week and then kegged. Everything was done in primary.

Its been kegged for ten days and Im really enjoying it. It started off super tart but has settled down nicely. Its a dark red color with a pinkish head.

 

[Fid]

Nice! Thanks for the input. I'll definately give the whole fruit some consideration. I'm excited to hear that yours came around so quickly. That's been my biggest concern as im working with a short deadline. I'm sure it could be a better beer if I gave it more time but oh well, it'll be a fun experiment. Did you add the fruit in a hop sack or did you just filter when racking? If you hadn't boiled the fruit first you would have thawed it first or just added them frozen?

 

[Bru]

The fruit probably could have been added frozen but I didn't want to take any chances thats why I boiled it but probably would have been OK straight from the bag. The general trend is to add the fruit after a week of fermentation, if its added to the boil or too early less fruitiness comes through.
I just poured it straight into the primary. Racking was a bit of a mission - I didn't use a filter or anything - just the racking cane.
And BTW - I included 10% medium crystal in the recipe as well.