Priming with juice

[CanAusBrewer]

Has anybody had experience priming with juice before? Would you just assume that the sugar in the ingredients is sucrose and prime accordingly or do you have to adjust for fermentability? I am planning to use "apricot nectar" in a can to prime a beer which has 1200 g of apricot puree in the fermenter to get more apricot flavour. I assume the sugars it contains are a combination of sucrose and fructose but is there much difference in fermentability between them?

Ideally each can contains 63.2 g sugar which would mean that if I use two cans I would be priming 19 l of beer with 126.4 g of sugar. Would this be an appropriate amount for an American wheat beer like Blue Moon?

Thanks,
Matt

 

[CanAusBrewer]

Seriously has nobody tried this before?

 

[charliehorse]

I haven't tried it (mostly because I keg and force carbonate), but I would be cautious about using Fructose or Sucrose as a fermentable. While they will certainly ferment, you may get some off-flavors and turn your beer funky. Fructose is a monosaccharide and it will ferment like the Maltose that we've come to know and love, Sucrose is a disaccharide made up of Fructose and Glucose which doesn't ferment as cleanly (in fact, that's why, in all-grain brewing we raise the temperature of the mash during the last 15 minutes of the mash, to break apart the clumps of sugars and carbs).

That said, since you know what the sugar concentration of the nectar is, you could use just one can and add a replacement amount of priming sugar as insurance for carbonation and you wouldn't get as much off-flavors.

http://www.brewerylane.com/sugarsum.html

 

[phug]

I use 55 ml/gallon of apple juice concentrate to prime my Ciders and Graffs. Apple juice is nearly all fermentable, however other fruits, such as pear, or typically stone fruit (prune plums especially) have higher concentrations of naturally occurring sorbitol, which is unfermentable.

"Peaches and apricots have similar levels of sorbitol -- 1 gram per 100 grams of fruit weight"
http://www.ehow.com/info_8444739_levels-sorbitol-fruit.html

Basically take a look at the serving information, take the serving size, and the number of grams of sugar in the serving ( nutritional information in canada is almost always on the side of the packaging, makes this easy) and then multiply or divide the serving size to get the right number of grams of priming sugar. Use a priming calculator to figure out a ballpark of how many grams of priming sugar you need, because different sugars contain different amounts of sugar. You won't get it exact, but it should get you in the right range. If you have to add LOTS of juice, don't forget to factor in the volume of the juice when factoring in what volume of liquid you will be carbonating.

 

[CanAusBrewer]

That said, since you know what the sugar concentration of the nectar is, you could use just one can and add a replacement amount of priming sugar as insurance for carbonation and you wouldn't get as much off-flavors.

http://www.brewerylane.com/sugarsum.html

Thanks for the help guys. I like this idea of using one can of apricot nectar and making up the rest of the sugar with table sugar. I am not able to find apricot extract here in Australia, which I understand people would generally add at bottling, so this is the alternative method I have proposed to achieve my desired results.

 

[andrewsbromley]

I've done it before using blackberry juice (froze the berries, mashed them, then forced the liquid through cheesecloth). I took specific gravity readings, then calculated how much sugar should be in it from there. It might have been a fluke, but all the bottles I primed using this method were way over carbonated. I want to try it again to hone my technique a bit, and next time I'll assume I need 20% less sugar than I would normally calculate to prime.

 

[charliehorse]

Thanks for the help guys. I like this idea of using one can of apricot nectar and making up the rest of the sugar with table sugar. I am not able to find apricot extract here in Australia, which I understand people would generally add at bottling, so this is the alternative method I have proposed to achieve my desired results.

I wouldn't use table sugar either. Too much funkiness. Priming Sugar (corn sugar) is flavor neutral.

 

[FarmerTed]

I've done it with tart cherry concentrate, also with cola and root beer, fwiw. Just look at the nutritional info, and the sugars listed are going to just be sucrose, fructose, and glucose most likely (you can look up nutritional info on apricots to make sure there aren't any unfermentable sugars in there). It has worked totally fine for me. I typically add 2 g of sugar per 12 oz bottle, and my beers carbed up fine with the juices and sodas.

 

[CanAusBrewer]

Thanks for the advice guys. Hope this works! I have brewed the beer and it smells amazing with the coriander and orange peel and I am debating adding the apricot but it comes at the request of SWMBO so I don't believe I can back out now.

SWMBO won't let me buy another fermenter until we have a bigger brewery...er apartment... so I have proposed n alternate method for adding fruit as well. I intend to wait until this American wheat has fully fermented out and reached FG, then cold crash to flocc the yeast and clear the beer and add my frozen pureed apricot block (which was blended in a sanitised blender and stored in a sanitised container) to a pre-boiled muslin sack and add to primary. I will then allow the beer to climb back to 17 deg C.

Fermentation will kick back in again and once I have again reached a steady FG I will bottle with a mixture of 50% strained apricot nectar and make up the other 50% with raw sugar. How does this sound? Will my crazy plan work?

On second thought, this beer has so much trub that I might just have to rack it rather than use the tap to bottle. Perhaps I have no choice but to purchase a secondary fermenter...

 

[CanAusBrewer]

I should note that the purpose of the muslin sack is so I can easily bottle without having to deal with the pulp. I have a 30 l Copper Tun PE fermenter which has a tap at the base which draws from above. It has given me pretty clear beer in the past but I have always strained my wort and dry hopped in muslin sacks.