Experimenting with Fruit in my IPAs

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

chriscelone

New Member
Joined
Aug 31, 2022
Messages
2
Reaction score
0
Location
CT
Hey guys, Happy Hump Day! I've drank some great IPAs with guava, mangos, and passionfruit and I want to start exploring adding fruit to my IPAs (and possibly stouts). I read that for each gallon of beer you make that you should add 1-1.5 gallons of fruit (seems like a lot to me). I have several questions related to incorporating fruit:
  • When making IPAs, has anybody added fruit to primary or secondary fermenters and if so, what are your recommendations and were you outcomes?
  • Do you cut the fruit up and just place them in muslim bags?
  • Also, should they be ripe when you add them?
  • For stouts, I was thinking of adding some ripe bananas. Has anybody tried this?
Looking forward to the group's feedback. Thank you so much for your help! Cheers!
 
I read that for each gallon of beer you make that you should add 1-1.5 gallons of fruit

Wow. That's not only a crazy amount of "fruit" given it's mostly water, measuring fruit using volume is sub-optimal.
From my admittedly narrow experience with fruiting wheat beers, one pound of pureed fruit per finished gallon of beer always works well. Doesn't really matter how the fruit was pureed - frozen or fresh. Also, when using berries, using pectinase will increase yield and greatly reduce protein haze...

Cheers!
 
Putting fruit in beer makes me think of all the grape malt duck I use to drink when underage. Only had to be 18 back then.

Some of the flavors you seem to be wanting can be gotten from the correct hops and no fruit at all. For the grapefruit flavor that I like in beer, I get a better grapefruit taste from the hops used alone and no actual grapefruit than I do with the grapefruit included.

I'd just recommend that you find a already made beer recipe with the fruit you wish to use and try those till you get some experience to strike out doing your own recipes and experiments.
 
Putting fruit in beer makes me think of all the grape malt duck I use to drink when underage. Only had to be 18 back then.

Some of the flavors you seem to be wanting can be gotten from the correct hops and no fruit at all. For the grapefruit flavor that I like in beer, I get a better grapefruit taste from the hops used alone and no actual grapefruit than I do with the grapefruit included.
Which hops do you use for a grapefruit taste? Thanks!
 
Which hops do you use for a grapefruit taste?
There are actually quite a few that give a good grapefruit taste. I once made a single hop with all Cascade back in the time I was making a lot of beer with actual grapefruit. The Cascade is the beer that showed me how much better grapefruit flavor I can get with just hops.

However all of these are supposed to give some grapefruit flavor and/or aroma notes.

https://beermaverick.com/hops/tag/grapefruit/

And you can find others by just googling with search terms similar to this...... hops with grapefruit flavor
 
Of course, focusing on "grapefruit" is a lay-up.
Now do "raspberry". Not so easy, outside of actual raspberries :)

fwiw, I use frozen berries 'cuz they're less expensive than buying puree - then make my own puree.

For a 10 gallon batch I use a pound of berries per gallon. While the berries are thawing in a big lidded pot I make up a quart of hibiscus tea (4 ounces of flowers, bring to a boil then steep for 20 minutes), strain out the flowers then add that to the berries along with a teaspoon or two of pectic enzyme and a half cup of corn sugar. Run that through a food blender, then bring the whole thing up to 140°F, turn off the heat and wrap the pot in towels. Let that sit for a few hours, dump it into a fresh fermenter, and rack the raw wheat beer on top.

The corn sugar and fruit sugars will take a couple days to ferment out, then cold-crash under CO2 and rack to purged kegs...

Cheers!
 
Now do "raspberry". Not so easy, outside of actual raspberries
Now we're getting back to that grape malt duck experience of my youth!

I guess I burned myself out on fruity berry flavored stuff a long time ago. And with all the pumpkin spice beers and pumpkin spice lattes being foisted on me by proud makers of that stuff, I'm not sure I can take any more and keep from saying how much I can't stand drinking them! :bigmug:
 
Back
Top