Using frozen peaches vs. fresh??

[vandoogie]

Hey everyone, I'm brewing my third batch of beer, and decided to experiment with adding fruit to it, so this is a first for me. I am brewing 1 gallon of Peach Cobbler Ale, and the recipe calls for adding 2 ripe peaches (halved, peeled, and pitted) to the wort at flame-out, letting the peach pieces steep in the wort for 20 minutes, and then removing the peaches before chilling the wort.

I had trouble finding fresh peaches at any stores right now, so I ended up buying a bag of frozen peaches. The ingredients say "peaches, ascorbic acid, citric acid, malic acid", so I'm assuming there's no preservatives or anything to mess with my fermentation. How would be the best way of going about using these frozen peaches in my beer? Should I use them in the same way that the recipe says to use fresh ones (add at flame-out, steep, remove)? Should I put them into primary? Rack onto them into a secondary???

Advice very much appreciated!

 

[brewde]

I've always had bad luck adding fresh fruit to the fermenters. I never had a truly infected batch from it, I just ended up with additional flavors that weren't directly from the fruit juices. Adding them at flame-out and removing them is the best way I've heard of. But if I were stuck with frozen fruit and doing 1 gallon, I would let them get to room temp first so you don't start cooling the wort by adding a lot of ice to it.

 

[tacks]

Fresh is best if you have good produce from my experience, but I've used frozen when fruit is out of season and it turned out just fine. If you want to add fruit to your wort before you put it into primary, I have a feeling you may not have any flavor left... It took almost 2 lbs of cherries/gallon in secondary to get some real cherry flavor into my beer. Also if you add before primary, there's a good chance all of the fruit sugars will be fermented out, leaving no real peach flavor behind. From my personal experience, I'd say add them to secondary, and a lot more than just two peaches as you'd mentioned. A lot of people even puree or liquify their fruit to free up surface area and sugars. Just a couple of thoughts. Also, I didn't boil my fruit; since the wort had already fermented some, there was about 4% alcohol to kill any infection, but if you really want to make sure no bacterial infection - either boil them or even check into campden tablets. Best of luck to you.