Brewing with fruit preserves?

[AbeLogan]

I'm using the Mr. Beer 2-gallon fermenter, and I've made a lot of fruit beers that turned out great using canned fruit pureed in a blender. I want to make a beer with a strong apricot taste to it and high alcohol content, so I picked up a can of apricots to throw in the blender, and I also picked up an 18oz jar of apricot preserves, thinking that the preserves would increase the apricot flavor and the alcohol content. I was thinking of making the wort without the fruit, letting it ferment a few days, and then adding the pureed apricots and the preserves, so that the fermentation would be spread out over time & my keg wouldn't explode lol. I've seen a recipe that includes orange marmalade, but there was no apricot marmalade at the store, just preserves. Will my plan work? Or should preserves not be used for some reason?

Thanks for any help.

 

[day_trippr]

If there's going to be a problem using preserves it'll be from the pectin causing cloudiness. You can reduce that by adding pectic enzymes (which could include pectolyase, pectozyme, and/or polygalacturonase).
Otherwise it's fruit, should be ok...

Cheers!

 

[z-bob]

I have used crabapple jelly in cider before, and it works just fine. I would not add pectic enzymes because when you ferment pectin you get methanol. (I don't know if it's enough to be significant or not) The pectin will just settle to the bottom. My cider was nice and clear. Oddly, the red color settled to the bottom too.