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boiling fruit??
is it ok to boil fruit? then put it all in the primary or do i get rid of the fruit before it goes in the primary? thanks for any tips you could give me.
Boiling the fruit can give you a real bad pectin haze ....as far as putting it in the primary, you can but if you are looking for your beer to have fruit flavor and aroma you are better off to put it in the secondary....it's sort of like dry-hopping, you do it in the secondary so you can have the aroma and flavor profile, the action of the primary fermentation will just drive off and expel the aroma and flavors.......One word of caution....when adding fruit to the secondary allow adequate head space as fermentation will kick off again due to the sugars in the fruit....
GOODBREWING.....
When adding in the fruit you do want to boil it to kill off any wild yeast or bad bugs that may be in it. To aviod the pectin haze you can get an additive that will clear the beer up for you (most LHBS sell this), or you can do a wheat beer...since that type of beer is suppose to be hazey.....or if you don't care about hazey beer don't worry about it. I personally don't care too much if my beer is hazy or sparkling clear. Check out the April 24th, 2006 show on fruit beers at http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/jamil.php
ok i have 3 pounds of frozen sweet cheeries and 4 pounds of fresh sour cherries that i just put in the freezer. now should i put the fresh ones in the boil to kill every thing and put it all in the primary or do i boil it later and put into the secondary along with the store bought frozen ones.Thanks for helpin the newbie. also i dont really care if the beer is hazy as long as it tastes good. my desired affect it a strong cherry flavored wheat beer.
I handle most of my fruit additions in the following manner:
Fruit goes in secondary.
I bring to the boil a half gallon of water (or a full gallon depending on how much fruit I have). Once the water is at a roilling boil, I kill the heat and add my fruit. The heat sort of flash pastuerizes the the fruit, but doesn't drive off too many volatiles (aromatics) of the fruit by boiling.
That fruit mix goes into the bottom of my secondary fermentor, I rack the beer out of primary on top of the fruit.
Becareful as dartgod said about a secondary fermentation, there may be blow off. Boiling fruit can release pectin from the skins. To combat this you can use 3 tsp of pectic enzyme which cuts this down quit a bit. Aging after that seems to help too. Get pectic enzyme at your LHBS, or anywhere they sell wine making stuff.
do you dump the fruit and water in or do you drain the fruit?? thanks again
I would dump it all in. The water would have a lot of the juice that you want to make it into you beer. You may also want to remove the pits from the cherries first.
I dump the whole thing water and all. I sometimes even add a little DME to the water when boiling. This way I ensure a second fermentation starts up, I get a little more yeast and they chew through the extra sugar from the fuit. I think the restarted ferment actually helps "stir" the fruit bits around too.
Maybe I am crazy but it works for me.
Should you, or can you, blend the fruit into a puree before adding it? If so, should that be done before it is cooked?
Thanks.
Bill Velek
I considered making the puree. But if you heat that up I would think more pectin would be released from a puree than whole fruit.
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