Fresh Fruit and Alcohol Boost affecting OG?

[dipdop]

I just brewed my second batch, we made the AHB Raspberry Ale and we decided we wanted to add some fresh fruit for authenticity..
I read about brewing with fruit and I'm confident that I haven't contaminated the batch.

This is the first time we've tried a mini-mash recipe as well, I want as much of the full experience as I can get.
I also bought the brewvint alcohol booster, because, why not?

However, the question is, when I took the OG of the beer in the primary fermentor, at the appropriate temperature, it came to 1.05.

That is exactly the projected OG on the recipe.. I would have thought that the alcohol boost would have affected the OG, and I imagine that the fresh fruit might also affect it in strange and difficult to predict ways..

What do the experienced make of this? Can you expect the alcohol boost, which I understand is just sugar, to affect the OG? Did my first attempt at mini-mash produce less than the usual amount of sugars?

I assume it will be fine, but I'd like to know where my math is going wrong.

Thanks
michael

 

[amh0001]

I'm not totally sure about the sugar showing thru on your OG, but then again if the other parts of your process are solid, the you should have nothing to worry about (except hangovers) from you awesome potent brew.

 

[weetodd]

Well, I'd say your thinking is pretty well spot on. Assuming all of your measurements were spot on and such, your base beer should be close to your target OG and it would also make sense for any fruit additions (puree) and alcohol boost (which I'm assuming is some sugar of some kind) to increase your OG.

Maybe your measurement was off a bit, either on volume or hydrometer or temperature. All of those things could throw an OG measurement off by a couple of point here or there. I'd just recommend that you calibrate your measuring equipment just to be sure you're not way off.

The good news is I've found that you'll still have a good drinkable beer at the end and a few points of gravity in the beginning or end probably won't be noticeable either way.

Good luck with your fermentation!

 

[dipdop]

Calibrating is probably a good idea at any rate, reading through the foam in the wine thief can be a challenge but I'm pretty sure I got that right, I didn't take a temp test after transferring it to the bucket so the temp might have dropped a bit more, however the air temp in my house at the time was about 73 degrees, so I don't think it would have dropped very sharply.

Thanks for the advice, and the encouragement.

 

[Wellshooter]

In my experience the AHS alcohol boost adds about 5 points to the OG.

 

[dipdop]

SO update on the beer after aging in the bottles and trying to drink it slowly - it is delicious.
Basically I added two boxes of fresh raspberries to the wort after the hops, after letting it cool to a safe temp to prevent the release of pectins and left it covered but did not bring the temp down for 20 minutes(after reading about the requirements for sterilizing fruit without boiling). Then after the first week, in the primary fermentor, I tasted it when taking a gravity reading and decided it was not raspberry enough.

So I went and bought the largest bag of organic raspberries I could find in the freezer section at the grocery store and did a similar thing, boiled water and let it stop boiling, poured in the frozen berries with the heat on medium and kept it up, covered, and stirring periodically with a potato masher (to release as much juice as possible) for 20 minutes, then let that cool, covered and poured into the carboy, onto which I racked the contents of the primary.

Let sit for 10 days and bottled, and I've been drinking them as slowly as I can, after letting them age for three weeks.. they are very good.

The dominant flavor is the raspberry seeds, which I am really crazy about because it reminds me so much of eating them off the vine. I think that some have thought it was a little off putting, because it's basically bitterness, but I think that most of the people I have shared them with are very pleasantly suprised.

Now, the questions are, how would I keep the bitterness out, if I wanted it to be more "fruit forward" and how likely is it that part of the bitterness is due to leaving it at a higher temperature for longer after the boil, rather than using an ice bath to drop the temp as quickly as possible.

Expert opinions or shots in the dark?

 

[Gorosaurus]

I just brewed a Belgian White from AHS with the alcohol boost and somehow my OG read 1.065!

That's way above normal for that sort of brew. I can only imagine that the reading was off because I took the sample from near the top of the bucket (there were floating particles in the thief), but it was still an incredible reading.


I also have the Raspberry Ale about ready to go. I enjoy your thoughts on improving the recipe (did you bother with the artificial flavoring at all?), and I think I might try that as well. Thanks for the writings!

 

[PhoenixCoyote]

I got the brewvint alcohol booster for the first time in my last brew. It did not raise it the 1% as suggested, only 0.3%. So not happy with it. With the booster, my brew should have been 5.8 ABV, it came out 5.1 ABV.