Brewing with Fruit
A lot of home brewers like to experiment with fruit in their beers. After all, fruit brewing is an old Belgian tradition. This article will help you understand a bit more about brewing with fruit and how you can use fruit in your beers.
Adding fruit to beers is a great way to create a unique taste that only you can produce. You can have five brewers all produce the same recipe and you will get five distinctly different beers.
The difference comes from the way the fruit is handled during the brewing process. Frozen fruit tastes differently from canned and fresh fruit. Also when you add the fruit has a big part to play. The later in the process you add the fruit the fruitier the beer will be.
Types of Fruit
There are commonly four different types of fruit in play during the brewing process. Fresh fruit is perhaps my favorite type to use, but frozen fruit, canned fruit and fruit extract all have their roles. One the of the biggest benefits the other three types have over fresh fruit is that you don’t need to sanitize them before adding to your beer.
Fresh fruit must be either added to the boil or else steeped at 180 degrees for twenty minutes to kill off any bacteria. If you just fresh fruit to your fermenter you will be introducing bacteria and/or wild yeast to the brew.
Frozen and canned fruit don’t have this problem. Canned fruit is pasteurized before it ships and the freezing process kills off any bacteria that may be present. However, you can always steep at 180 for 20 minutes to be safe.
Fruit extract has the unique advantage of being able to be added to the bottling bucket. If you try to add fresh, frozen or canned fruits at bottling time you run the risk of over-carbonating your bottles. This can lead to potentially dangerous bottle bombs.
How Much Fruit Should I Use?
The rule I follow is that the higher the IBU’s the more fruit I should I add to my recipe. For example, using 1 pound of fresh blueberries in a 40 IBU beer may not have as noticeable of an effect as using 1 pound of fresh blueberries in a 10 IBU beer.
I recently learned this lesson with my Blueberry Breeze recipe. I started the recipe as a 45 IBU American Pale Ale to which I added 1 pound of blueberries. In my defense I was only trying to add a blueberry under tone (or “a hint” of blueberry taste). I didn’t want the blueberry taste to be the focal point.
After brewing and bottle conditioning the beer for a week I tried on only to find that the blueberry taste was being completely overpowered by the bitterness of the beer. For the next attempt I will be brewing the Blueberry Breeze as a 12.5 IBU wheat beer with 7 pounds of blueberries.
I would recommend adding about 10 pounds of fresh fruit per 5 gallons of beer. Obviously some styles like stouts and porters will not experience any effect from this fruit schedule. Does that mean you shouldn’t add fruit to those brews? Not at all - even if you can’t taste the fruit it does provide additional fermentables which will raise the alcohol content of your brew.
Of course, if you keep good notes and are not afraid to experiment you will quickly learn the effects of a particular fruit on your brews. Experimentation is the key ingredient to becoming an expert fruit brewer.
When Should I Add the Fruit?
This is another matter that is up to the individual brewer but here is some guiding factors:
- The later in the brewing process you add the fruit the more fruit taste will be in the beer.
- Never use any other form of fruit besides extract at the bottling stage.
- Fresh fruit needs to be sanitized first.
Given the above points I would recommend adding fresh fruit to the beginning of the boil and added frozen or canned fruit to the secondary fermenter. There is a lot of debate in the home brewing world so if you want to try something different then more power to you.
Keep experimenting and soon you will be producing the best fruit beers in your neighborhood.
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