As the men of the square table declared years ago, fruit does not belong in beer. While many people would agree with this idea, I’m not one of them. In my opinion, a well placed fruit, in an appropriate style of beer, can be a very welcomed surprise.
Fruit in beer can be downright annoying too. If you’re gonna go there, be bold. It really irks me to get psyched up to experience the marriage of the right fruit with the right grain, only to find out that said fruit got cold feet. Pete’s Wicked Strawberry Blonde comes to mind here. Another example is any of the many “pumpkin ales” that don’t even use pumpkin in the brewing process. It’s criminal I tell ya.
So when I decided recently to add raspberries to a chocolate stout I made, I wanted it to be clear that there were raspberries in there. There’s a great deal of debate over how and when to add fruit to your beer. Many brewers introduce it during the mash, which results in more of an “essence” of whatever fruit is in the beer’s name. In my opinion, the way to do it is to add your fruit to the secondary stage of fermentation. When the fruit is there during the primary fermentation, the yeast converts most of the fruit to alcohol, resulting in a dry beer with little fruit flavor. If you add the fruit to the secondary, after most of the yeast has fallen out, you’ll get much more intense flavor from the fruit.
There are times where you might want to put your fruit in during the mash, such as in a pumpkin ale. I recently experimented with this theory as well. In researching my pumpkin ale recipe last year I found numerous opinions on the best way to include the pumpkin. Some brewers think it’s best to use a real pumpkin, baked slightly and tossed in the mash for the entire boil. Others said to use the canned stuff, and a portion of those brewers said to put it in towards the end of the boil for maximum pumpkin flavor. Last year, I decided to use Libby’s Select canned pumpkin in the mash. The beer was good, but the pumpkin flavor was a little weaker than I wanted. So, this year I used more of it in the mash, and also put some canned pumpkin in the secondary. I’m much happier with this year’s batch. The pumpkin is very evident and balanced perfectly with the pie spices.
Adding the fruit to the secondary seems to make a big difference, so I decided to take what I’d learned and apply it to the raspberries that I was adding to my chocolate stout. I found that many brewers seem to think it’s best to freeze the fruit which breaks down the cell walls to allow more flavor to be released. The thought of dealing with several pounds of whole raspberries in this fashion was daunting to say the least. I needed to get the berries pureed, and leave the seeds behind. Yeah.
A quick trip to Austin Homebrew uncovered the perfect solution. It seems that a company out of Oregon makes a raspberry puree, sans seeds! The raspberry goop is already pasteurized and ready to become one with the suds. In the carboy it goes, along with several heaping tablespoons of Ghirardelli cocoa powder to do it’s thing for several weeks.
I have very high hopes for this batch and I’m already dreaming of my next fruit experiment. I think we’ve just scratched the surface with this fruity beer idea. What other creations can you dream up? I’m going to start working on my pineapple pale ale recipe now… let’s hear your ideas.
