Raspberries lending strong astringency?

[antiteam]

My wife made 5 gallons of a wheat and decided to go all out and add 12 lbs of frozen raspberries in the secondary. Upon tasting, we've found that the final product has a very strong astringent taste.

My first thought was infection, but then I started to wonder if the abnormally large amount of raspberries might have been to blame. I've heard recommendation that when using cherries, one should remove the seeds lest they lend an astringent character. I'm wondering if the sheer volume of raspberries (and therefore large number of seeds) might have caused this issue for us.

Has anyone else had a similar experience at all? Has anyone else brewed with that much raspberry?

 

[BorealBrewer]

Hi Antiteam!

Is the astringency sort of the same flavour as when you bite into a raspberry seed after swallowing the rest of the fruit? If so, it probably wasn't the raspberry fruit/juice, but the seeds that are the culprit.


I had never heard about the cherry astringency thing, but raspberry seeds definitely lend this quality to a brew. When I've made a wine or mead with raspberries, I try to tweak the recipe to compensate for this effect/flavour by letting the brew end sweeter, or backsweetening. I've also squished the raspberries through a wire strainer, like I wanted to make jam - keep the fruit and juice, lose the seeds.

If the astringency is overpowering, but otherwise you have lots of raspberry flavour, you might be able to blend what you have with more of the same base wheat beer. I did this with my first wine with raspberries in it - the new, bigger batch was very, very nice!

I hope this helps! I do love good raspberry anything, but they can be tricky little things to work with when fermenting!

 

[aiptasia]

Astringency can also be caused by aceto bacteria, steeping your grains too hot or too long, swiping some krausen into your beer by accident, over sparging/mashing or letting the pH get a little too acidic on the mash.

Just food for thought while you're trying to isolate the issue.

 

[kaboom133]

I know exactly what you talking about. When I brew with raspberries I keep it under 5 pounds per 5 gallon batch because the seeds give beer such an astringent flavor.

 

[tagz]

Thats a crapload of raspberries. I don't know about the rest of your process but I would guess it's the raspberries. I used 3 pounds in a 5 gallon batch and it had bright raspberry flavor... Raspberries tend to be more flavorful than other fruit in secondary. Randy Mosher does a run down in Radical Brewing.