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Apricot-Cherry Wheat-
Hiya,
I am going to be making a couple batches of wheat extract beer within the next couple days. I am thinking of adding 3lbs of fresh Bing cherries and 3lbs of fresh apricots to a 5 gallon batch during secondary.
I was wondering if anyone had experience with cherries and apricots together and what their advice would be.
Thanks,
-guynmt
I never used either, but that sounds really good...
I was walking through the grocery store and saw some organic strawberry jam, has anyone ever heard of using fruit preserves in beer?
In the organic stuff there isn't really anything besides fruit, sugar, and pectin, so there aren't any chemicals that I would mess with the outcome severely.
I used some apricot preserves in an Apricot Weizen in the primary, it added some flavor, but I didn't think enough. If you want something that has a real fruit presence, I'd use it in the secondary along with some real fruit or fruit concentrate.
Just my $.02
Thanks for the info, I'll have to try making some with a couple jars of it sometime and see how it turns out.
I second the fruit concentrate. mainly because it's already santized. You could use frozen fruit too. I used frozen raspberries in a raspberry ale I made and it came out nice. fresh would need to be steeped in hot water and you'd need to make sure the cherries are broken so the innards contact the hot water AND not sure but you might have to remove the seeds also.
DC
When I use frozen or whole fruit, I pastaurize by almost covering with water, bring the water to 180F, let it sit for a while, strain the fruit, put the juice in the secondary, put the fruit into a large hop bag & suspend it in the secondary.
@Brewski
Do you have much experience doing that? It sounds like a great way of going about it. Why 180 degrees? Why not boil it? I want to add apricot to a Wheat partial mash kit I'll be doing in the near future. Would you pit and skin the apricots as well?
If you boil the fruit you will activate the pectins, they will coagulate and you will have gloppy mess. That's exactly what you want to happen if you are making jelly or preserves, but I don't know if you want to dump that into your secondary.
Also if you boil the fruit make the mess and then dump all that into secondary you will never get the haze out of the beer. At 180 degrees you kill all the nasties and leave the pectin where its at, in the fruit and out of your beer. So the moral of the story is hold any fruit at 180 or so for 15 minutes kill all the stuff that wants to infect your beer and don't turn it into jelly.
Hope that helps
ID
Certainly, that helps a lot. What about skinning and pitting the fruit? I'm assuming yes?
I personally like to leave cherry pits in it can give a bit of nuttiness to the beer. Course I really dont like fruit beers much anyway.
e_
Been on the road all week.
I concur with my esteemed colleagues.
You only want to pasteurize the juice, not cook it.
I would skin & pit, when possible.
But I do a wild blackberry wheat or ale seasonally, not possible.
I make a LOT of fruit beers... (I run fresh fruit through the juicer while it's in season and cheap and freeze it). I thaw it on brewday and boil it for the last 10 min. That's not long enough to get pectin problems but it's enough to sanitize it.
A little (hard earned) advice when brewing with fruits:
1) Fruit has sugar which equals explosive primary fermentations (and high gravities); blow off tubes are critical.
2) Secondary needs to be about a week longer than normal (allows better settling and fruit sometimes needs to age a bit more)
3) Move your gear to the counter the day before you bottle or keg (fruit sludge is wispy and does not flocculate well.
I think the cherry apricot combo sounds great! Let us know how it turns out 
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