Raspberry fruit beer - seeking help with procedures

[rhys333]

Hey everyone,
I'm trying my first fruit beer in a couple weeks using home-grown raspberries and appreciate your advice on best practices. I'll be using a saison as my base beer (or possibly an american wheat), ~5% abv before fruit, 18 IBUs, with no late hop additions to promote fruit flavor and aroma. I plan to add raspberries to the fermentor for best flavor, rather than the mash, boil, or post-boil. My questions relate to the following:

1) Can I add directly to primary after one week, or is it best to secondary the fruit?
2) Potential for infection? Can I just wash, crush and add the raspberries, or should I treat first with either campden or pasteurization?
3) What's a good ratio for flavorful fruit like raspberries? I read 0.5 lbs per gallon of beer is appropriate.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Marktic]

I just bottled a raspberry/huckleberry wheat beer yesterday. The bottling process was not fun, too many raspberry pieces made it into the bottling bucket. I tried filtering using a cheesecloth, at the base of my racking cane, but that would plug up quickly as well.

Other than that though, I am really excited about this beer. The samples tasted exactly as I had hoped, with just the right amount of raspberry. I recently had a raspberry wheat from a micro brewery which all I could taste was the berries...too much. It made me decide to tone down my addition to a little under .5lb/gallon. I can still taste the hops and a good portion of malt.

I would add the berries in the last week before bottling, so if you bottle at three weeks, add them at two. I racked onto the berries and let them sit for one week. I tasted a few raspberries from the fermenter afterwards and it seemed all the flavor was extracted.

I had frozen the berries first, and then heated them up to 150F for 15 minutes or so. I don't think this step is necessary, and I almost skipped it myself, but it was easy enough to do.

Good luck, let us know how it turns out.

 

[Artifishal]

I too am about to brew and wanted to add some mulberries from s tree in my yard. I was also wondering, how much to use, when to add them, and how to sanitize them.

Any more insight from you all would be great. Thx.

 

[ArcLight]

I've made several fruit beers.

1 - fresh fruit is covered with wild yeast and microbes, so you may want to pasturize at 160F, but that will introduce a pectin haze.

2 - you can run them through a fruit processor, but you may also want to freeze them as that will rupture the cell walls.

3 - the secondary fermentation can be slow and last weeks, with an occasional glug being heard from the air lock. If you don't want to wait that long then give it at least 1-2 weeks to gain more of the fruit flavor.

4 - there will be a lot of fruit sludge, so be careful when racking. You my even want to rack to another vessel, let it settle for several hours, then bottle it. Getting sludge in each bottle isn't fun, and doesn't taste as good.


While I haven't done is - you might even add the fruit to the primary after a week, then let it sit a couple more weeks. Rack to a secondary to let the sludge you invariable brought over settle. Then rack to your keg/bottling bucket.

 

[Kiichi]

I would probably be on the save side and disinfect the raspberries somehow. Otherwise you could turn it into a sour by accident, which of course would still result in a nice beer.

Freezing I dunno, but heating it a bit might be a good idea here. Then add them towards the end of the process, like Marktic said. The later additions are put in the more flavor they carry. With fruit you just need to watch that all the sugars they added have been fermented out.

In terms of amounts raspberries are perhaps the most potent fruit you can add, so you don´t need that much. As Marktic said a bit under 0.5 pound per gallon should be ok. For 5g you could probably get away with 2 pound or less if they are flavorful raspberries.

With mulberries you probably need a bit more, though also not masses. Always depends on how intense the ones you have are.

 

[Roadie]

I tried to clone Rubaeus last year but my beer was not as sweet or as dark. I heard Founders uses raspberry concentrate instead of fresh fruit so maybe that contributed to the difference. Anyway, I used 4.5 lbs of fresh red raspberries (5 gallon batch), rinsed, frozen and put into secondary without heating in any way. I left them in secondary for 2 weeks. It didn't get infected and I wouldn't call the raspberry flavor overpowering but when I brew it again will be changing the grains slightly and mashing a little higher.

 

[Kiichi]

Oh, I forgot to mention that I add my raspberries as a puree, so that really help efficiency I recon.

 

[castillo556]

2.5 lbso of frozen raspberries added to primary after fermentation had ceased and let sit for about a week. Cold crashed and had no issues with a messing rack.

Beer is very raspberry forward with a pink color to it. It finishes with a tartness from the berries without being overly sweet or fake tasting like more commercial variations (Shock Top)

It's been my favorite fruit beer so far I've made.

 

[andrewf1985]

I pasteurised my raspberries and added them 2 days into primary fermentation. Fermentation has happily continued and the colour and smell has conituned to improve. My recipe has come from the Greg Hughes book, raspberry wheat beer. Calls for a 100g per litre so i went with that as its first time i'd done the recipe. Seems to be a good way to go from what i've read but i will adjust acording to my taste

 

[ArcLight]

Oh, I forgot to mention that I add my raspberries as a puree, so that really help efficiency I recon.

I't will help your utilization and getting more flavor. You will also have a fair amount of sludge at the bottom so be careful racking.

 

[rhys333]

Great info here folks. I think I've settled on doing a saison fermented with 3711 yeast. Should work well with the raspberries. I want this beer to be RED, so I'll use at least 10% munich for colour. Based on what I'm reading here, I'll stay just under 0.5 lbs fruit per gallon. Probably wise, particularly since 3711 ferments almost completely out and there won't be any residual sugars to counter the raspberry tartness. I'm temped to add fruit directly to primary after 7 days, and then secondary right before bottling only if its looking sludgy. Looking forward to this one.

 

[Kiichi]

Yeah, 3711 will chew that right down. Maybe a tad of crystal malt could be wise for balance.

Let us know how it turns out!