Brewing with fruit

atomeyes · Post by **atomeyes** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 3:09 pm

I'm tackling a few recipe possibilities and I've never really used fruit in my brews.

some of the beer i'm toying with include:

-brett claus as a primary yeast and fermenting it with mangoes
- doing a lacto-brett sour with tangerenes and/or kumquats
-soursop wheat beer with lactose
-a saison with cucumber in it

I'm pretty sure i'll just add the cucumber to the carboy for a few days. The other fruit? I'm not really sure what i'll do.

when should you add fruit to a boil (if ever)? if you're using brett, should you only add fruit to a secondary fermentation? what if brett's your primary?

markaberrant · Post by **markaberrant** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 3:26 pm

In general, I would check out what Crooked Stave is doing, he did an entire master's thesis on brett fermentation which is documented here - www.brettanomycesproject.com

Most of Chad's beers are 100% brett, and typically feature fruits and spices. I visited the brewery back in Feb (he's "borrowing" space at Funkwerks in Fort Collins, Co) and picked up a bottle of Wild Wild Brett Yellow (mango, corriander, turmeric and ginger). It was incredibly good.

Also tons of info on the Burgundian Babble Belt homebrew forum.

JerCraigs · Post by **JerCraigs** » Tue Aug 14, 2012 9:14 am

Don't add it to the boil... I forget why exactly but it does something weird. Almost everything I have seen says to add it to the secondary. Considering freezing the fruit before hand.

markaberrant · Post by **markaberrant** » Tue Aug 14, 2012 12:37 pm

In general, when adding fruit to sour/brett beers, you add the fruit 1-3 months before packaging.

atomeyes · Post by **atomeyes** » Tue Aug 14, 2012 7:50 pm

JerCraigs wrote:Don't add it to the boil... I forget why exactly but it does something weird. Almost everything I have seen says to add it to the secondary. Considering freezing the fruit before hand.

pectin, apparently, is released when added to the boil.

atomeyes · Post by **atomeyes** » Tue Aug 14, 2012 7:51 pm

markaberrant wrote:In general, when adding fruit to sour/brett beers, you add the fruit 1-3 months before packaging.

isn't that on the aggressive side?
i was under the impression that fruit with drive up the gravity, therefore you need it it sit for up to 12 months....

unless you're using brett as the primary and are adding fruit to the primary?

markaberrant · Post by **markaberrant** » Tue Aug 14, 2012 9:07 pm

atomeyes wrote:
markaberrant wrote:In general, when adding fruit to sour/brett beers, you add the fruit 1-3 months before packaging.
isn't that on the aggressive side?
i was under the impression that fruit with drive up the gravity, therefore you need it it sit for up to 12 months....

unless you're using brett as the primary and are adding fruit to the primary?

3 months is plenty of time. Fruit does not drive up the gravity, in many cases it actually dilutes it.