Bottle conditioning with pineapple?

[corycorycory09]

I am making this centennial blonde recipe tomorrow:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f66/centennial-blonde-simple-4-all-grain-5-10-gall-42841/

I am going to keg most of it, but I want to try some experiments with a few bottles.

I was thinking about blending some pineapple and adding different amounts of juice to the bottles. Have you tried this before? Any reason this wouldn't work?

I would still add a small amount of priming sugar as well, adjusting down for the sugar content of the pineapple.

 

[azazel1024]

Make sure it is pasturized pineapple juice you are using. If not, the bromeline in the pineapple is probably going to destroy any possible head.

Also, gravity readings on the pineapple juice probably aren't going to be super accurate (though I supposed you could do back of the envelope math if you are getting juice by looking at the nutritional label and eyeballing the sugar content. I would imagine most of the sugars are going to be full fermentable since it is fruit juice).

 

[corycorycory09]

Make sure it is pasturized pineapple juice you are using. If not, the bromeline in the pineapple is probably going to destroy any possible head.

Also, gravity readings on the pineapple juice probably aren't going to be super accurate (though I supposed you could do back of the envelope math if you are getting juice by looking at the nutritional label and eyeballing the sugar content. I would imagine most of the sugars are going to be full fermentable since it is fruit juice).

The thing is I've only heard of fruit additions done in secondary. You think it will be okay to add it straight to the bottle?

I suppose I could always do a small secondary fermentation in a growler and bottle a week later...

 

[azazel1024]

Remember, you generally want about 1/200th the weight of sugar to weight of beer for proper carbonation (raising gravity by around .002 works out to 1/200th weight addition of sugar to beer), depending on other factors of course (beer temp at bottling, level of desired carbonation, etc.)

So if you had pineapple juice that had 32g of sugars per 236ml serving* for a 351ml bottle of beer (12oz) you'd want to add something like 10-12ml of pineapple juice per bottle for proper carbonation. That is NOT very much. Roughly half a cup of pineapple juice divided among a 6-pack.

*I looked up the rough sugar content for a cup (8fl oz) of pineapple juice, but it is a ROUGH number

 

[azazel1024]

The thing is I've only heard of fruit additions done in secondary. You think it will be okay to add it straight to the bottle?

I suppose I could always do a small secondary fermentation in a growler and bottle a week later...

See my last post, if measured right, yes it would probably be okay. I would make sure to pasturize it briefly first, even if it is already pasturized. No clue what might be lurking in it to spoil your beer if you don't heat it up for a bit first (160F for 10 minutes or a boil for a minute or two should be enough time).

You are not likely to get much flavor contribution when you are talking only roughly 3% juice and 97% beer though. I suppose there might be some.

I'd do a secondary fermentation in some of it in a growler with an airlock stuck on it if you want real flavor contribution. Then you could do something like 10-20% pineapple juice and 80-90% beer in secondary and let it ferment out for a few days (just make sure to heat pasturize the pineapple to kill any bugs. If it is unpasturized pineapple juice, I'd make sure to boil it for at least 10 minutes first, that may denature the bromeline, but I am not sure what temp it denatures at).

If you feel like a really fun experiment and have 3 growlers laying around, you could try one 5/95%, one 10/90% and one 20/80% (or 15/85%) mix of juice to beer and see how each one turns out.

 

[JimRausch]

Sounds like an interesting experiment. One potential caution from experience: make sure you like the flavor of whatever you're adding after the sugar is all gone. I bottle primed an Irish Red with a bottle of POM pomegranate juice once. It left a real nasty off-flavor. Bitter, astringent. After 6months of forcing them down, I dumped the last 20 or so. It was a beautiful red color though..........