Questions on adding mango to cider

[Chief91]

I've tried searching for similar questions on here but never saw a plain answer to my question.

I have 5 gallons of cider that I fermented with Lallamends Kviek Voss. Fermentation is done and I'm looking to let it age in secondary with mangoes. My question is should I use the Vintners Harvest puree from my LBH or use whole frozen fruit from the grocery store?

The Vinters Harvest is $25 for a 3lb can, so I'm looking at $50 which is definitely not something I want to do. Alternatively, I could buy the frozen mango chunks for much cheaper, but then I would have to puree them to get the big mango flavor I'm going for. This means I would have to pasteurize the resulting puree as well since I wouldn't trust that my blender was completely sterile. Does that affect flavor?

Its getting stabilized before I put it into secondary with fruit to chill for a month. It will then be kegged and carbonated, with no bottle conditioning.

 

[crazyjake19]

I've never used the puree, but I regularly make a mango cider using 4 gallons of cheap store bought apple juice and 4 lbs of frozen mango chunks from the same store. After primary has completed, I thaw the mangos (still in the bag) and once soft, I squeeze the bag to crush them up as best I can. I add the thawed mango chunks in a strainer bag in the secondary and rack on top of it. After a week, I'll rack again to the keg. Though I'm not sure why I haven't just started putting the mango bag in the keg and removing from the keg after one week, eliminating the extra transfer.

I don't stabilize at all, since my mango cider tends to go much faster than any of my other ciders. However, if I knew it would last more than a week or two, I would stabilize. This method produces a cider which is still plenty sweet (for us), though I imagine stabilizing prior to adding the mango would retain even more sweetness. In many of my other ciders, particularly any berry ciders, a lot of flavor is lost if stabilizing after adding and removing the berries, though I have not found that to be the case with mango.

And for what it's worth, I've never had an infection or any ill effects using the frozen fruit straight from the bag. I just sanitize the top of the bag and my scissors before cutting the bag and dumping them in.