anyone know anything about brewing with fruit?

[eyedea]

Hey everyone, I just recently started brewing a few different beers from the premade recipes, but I went to the grocery store and saw peaches and cherries on sale, and remembered the Sam Adam's cherry wheat and Pyramid's apricot ale. so I was wondering if I could use a recipe like that to brew out a beer similar to that with cherries or with peaches. any tips or suggestions?

 

[jblaschke]

I haven't brewed a fruit beer in a long while, but there are several things to keep in mind. First, you'll probably want to stick with some of the lighter wheat beers that are neutral in flavor for your first batches. You can make fruit beers with darker ales and such, but it's more challenging to get a good balance. Include pectic enzyme in your wort when you pitch the yeast if you want to help ensure the brew clears.

 

[eyedea]

yes, there is a recipe for a wheat beer that i was thinking of using. If you've tried it Sam Adams has a cherry wheat so I was going to try yo make something similar.
this was my plan:
-buy cherries
-cherries would be seeded and cut to small chunks then frozen
-I was thinking of letting it ferment for 3 days then racking to a secondary fermenter to get the lees out and at that point add the cherries.
-let sit for 2 weeks

the container of cherries I bought today was just under 2.5lbs so I was thinking of using that to add to my beer

 

[jblaschke]

Be aware that most cherries used in brewing are tart cherries, not the sweet dessert kind commonly available in supermarkets. Tart cherries have a more intense profile that stands up in beer, wine or mead making much better than sweet cherries. Just FYI.

 

[eyedea]

hmmmm, I didn't know that...that does change things. Dang! haha, I was all excited to use some summer fruit to make into a beer. I might have to change up my strategy.
do you remember how much fruit you added for flavor in your brews usually?

 

[akueck]

There should be several fruit beer recipes on the forum here, I know I've put up at least two.

Cherries are often paired with a stout base beer, so you aren't stuck with wheat beers to use fruit. I did a few on an amber ale base.

The thing to keep in mind when using fruit is that you may have to tone down other components in the beer to let the fruit come out. Depending on the base recipe, that could mean using less hops (or different hops), less roasted malts, etc.

Certain malts and yeasts (and processes) bring out fruit flavors of various kinds to different degrees. Many of the dark crystal malts produce raisiny or cooked dark fruit flavors. Roasted malts might give you stone fruit flavors like plum or cherry. Hefeweizen yeasts can be coaxed into banana and other tropical fruit expressions, other yeasts you might consider include Saison.

The Oregon fruit purees get a lot of good press for use in beers. No prep work (unless you count "open can") and the quality is good.

 

[wildaho]

I once made a cherry chocolate imperial stout. I think I used (it's been several years ago and I can't find the recipe) around one pound of bing cherries per gallon of beer. We brewed 7 five gallon batches in a row and then combined them in a 59 gallon merlot barrel and aged it for about two months.

At that level, the cherries were subtle and seemed to fade over time: although the complexities over the years were very nice. The last bottle I had was aged for five years and very, very nice! But there was only a subtle hint of the cherries.

 

[eyedea]

I once made a cherry chocolate imperial stout. I think I used (it's been several years ago and I can't find the recipe) around one pound of bing cherries per gallon of beer. .

this sounds amazing. If you do find the recipe let me know
I will take a look on here for some other recipe to see. I don't know what all my brew shop has as I have only done the pre-made recipes they have, so I will talk to them as well