Raspberries in secondary?

[mcavers]

Hey brewers - this is what I plan to do. Let me know if you think it sounds like utter madness.

I want to make a raspberry blonde ale, and want the freshest possible raspberry flavour. So I brewed the base beer yesterday - a blonde ale, 1.040, mashed fairly hot to up the body in advance of all those fruit sugars - and will let it ferment to completion. Using 3522 so this will happen in a week or less. Love those esters and that nice nutty profile.

On racking day, I'm going to take a couple of pounds of fresh raspberries, wash them well, and then put them into a big, sanitized jar. I'll pour a cup or so of vodka over them, seal the jar, and shake them gently to make sure each berry gets a good vodka soak. After five minutes or so, I'll pour the vodka off (probably to make caesars!), open the jar, and mash the raspberries well with a sanitized potato masher. Then I'll pour the berry pulp into a sanitized carboy and rack the blonde onto it. Planning to give the beer two weeks to sit on the fruit and absorb its deliciousness.

Have any of you used this technique - or anything like it - before?

 

[mcavers]

Oh, further to that - Plan B, if I can't find fresh local rasps next week, is to use salmonberries. Way more subtle, but very tasty.

 

[Epiphanic]

I've done the fresh raspberry route a couple of times, but I didn't mash them. I just plopped them in whole. Worked beautifully.

 

[pkrath84]

^how was the flavor extraction?

Most of the recommendation I've seen is to freeze then thaw and refreeze to break em open and plop them straight in from that point.

 

[dstranger99]

It would be so much simpler to just get a raspberry extract and just pour that into the secondary......I've made Raspberry Wheat that way and every woman in my office I gave some too loved it !!......One of them even let me get my pecker wet....

 

[mcavers]

Hmm. Well, I'll report back about the vodka method, then! Thanks for your input...

 

[Cyclman]

I did some vanilla and chocolate in a rum for a porter, still tastes boozy after 6 months.

 

[pcollins]

I personally wouldn't do it that way. But I'm not you and vice versa.

I've always pureed them in a pot with a hand blender and heated that up to 180ºF for 10 minutes. That pasteurizes (sanitizes) them and then there's no concern of weirdness in secondary. It also does a very fine job of extracting ALL juice from the berries to be used in secondary.

Let them sit for a week on the beer and off you go.

 

[ColumbusAmongus]

Gah don't sell out and use the extract garbage, stick with real fruit, it is 10x better. Also, have more faith in your fruit. Fruit will be rotten if it is infected so just pick out the rotten ones or any with broken skins and you should be pretty safe.

I brew with fresh cherries and raspberries when in season and have had no contamination yet...perhaps I have been lucky but here is what I do. I first soak them in a bowl of warm water to de-bug and de-pesticide them and then soak them in star-san for ~ 1/2 hour or so with a bit stirring to make sure everything is getting in contact with the solution. Drain the star-san and do a light rinse and then put them in a freezer bag to freeze over night.

The freezer bag is nice with raspberries because you can easily liquify them up by squeezing the bag after you thaw them out. For cherries I mash them up in the bowl and then freeze. I try to get the air out of the bag to prevent discoloration from oxidation. Come pitch time, thaw the bag in hot water and off you go. Yumskies. I usually do this the night before so they are nice and fresh. Good luck there!

 

[ColumbusAmongus]

Oh and about vodka... Usually 70% EtOH solutions are used to sterilize...I am sure your common 80-100 proof vodka will do some damage to bugs but I would be skeptical that you would achieve the sterilization you think you are getting.

Here is a technical blip that I found:

Alcohols work through the disruption of cellular membranes, solubilization of lipids, and denaturation of proteins by acting directly on S-H functional groups. Ethyl and isopropyl alcohols are the two most widely used alcohols for their biocidal activity. These alcohols are effective against lipid-containing viruses and a broad spectrum of bacterial species, but ineffective against spore-forming bacteria. They evaporate rapidly, which makes extended contact times difficult to achieve unless the items are immersed.
The optimum bactericidal concentration for ethanol and isopropanol is in the range of 60% to 90% by volume. Their cidal activity drops sharply when diluted below 50% concentration. Absolute alcohol is also not very effective. They are used to clean instruments and wipe down interior of Biological Safety Cabinets and bottles, etc. to be put into Biological Safety Cabinets. Alcohols are generally regarded as being non- corrosive.

http://www.colorado.edu/ehs/pdf/Biosafety-EMS.Disinfectants & Sterilization Methods.12_08.pdf#page8

 

[Skrazybrews]

This really sounds interesting. I'd love to hear how it turns out. I mentioned this one to the wife and she wants to try some cherry and some blackberry.

 

[mcavers]

Hmmm. Well, given some of the excellent points you all raise, I don't think I'd use the vodka sanitizing method again - would probably do something like the poster who used Star San, or the poster who pasteurized. In fact, I'd probably pasteurize for safety's sake. All that said, my raspberry blonde ale tastes delicious after one week. Raspberries are such a perfect beer fruit! SO FAR (knocking furiously on wood) no sign of wild yeast contamination; as for bacterial contamination, I suppose we'll wait and see. This might be a batch to drink quickly due to its high risk nature - maybe I'll keg it!

Thanks for the input, everyone.

 

[DoctorMemory]

I just made a raspberry saison last week, and I went the puree and pasteurize route. Only took about fifteen minutes, and I feel a lot safer than I would have if I had just frozen them or dunked them in some sanitizer.