Adding fruit puree without making a sour beer

danglebell · Aug 29, 2024

There's been a few beers that I've tried (commercial) which are not sour (can't stand sour, waste of a perfectly good drink in my opinion) that have a fruit (/flavour) in and I've thought "how can I do the same...". Had a look up and seems adding fruit/puree to beer with any sort of yeast in it is a NO and will result in a sour beer, not the framboise/kirk style beer I am after. I got some puree and my plan is to brew a beer as normal, when ready for kegging, put it through a kegland filter to filter out the yeast, into a keg that previously had the fruit puree added (and has been pressurised), then shake the keg about to mix it.

Any clues on how likely to be successful this will be? Does the kegland filter actually work at filtering enough yeast out that it won't ferment in the (cold) keg? Will the finished beer taste anything like commercial drinks? Also how much raspberry puree is enough for a 23l batch, read comments that raspberry is strong and to use less but not seen any good amounts of it listed

fluketamer · Aug 29, 2024

no adding puree to beer wont necesssarily sour it.

especially if it is canned fruit puree with preservatives.

this is not that hard to do especially when kegging. you could prolly add almost anything to a keg prior to racking and just keep it cold so it doesnt ferment out or at least does so very very slowly. (ie gone by the time it is noticable)

i do this to most of my ciders.

getting the fruit flavor to stay in the beer can be difficult when adding to primary because a lot of yeast just eat through everything. and wont leave enough fruit flavor behind.

steve and james claim they can taste the passion fruit in there passion fruit pilsner (which sounds delish) using purees.

and they have many other fruit beer videos.

wheat beers do very well with fruit,

schoefenhoffer grapefruit is one of my favoriate small beer (2.5% i believe) . it apparently is easy to make with just adding simply grapefruit brand juice 50 /50 to a keg and racking the wheat on top.

lastly dont swirlt the keg to mix. racking ontop of the liquid will mix it enough IMO.

likely u will have to do trial and error to find the right amount of any fruit juice to use . that being said if you can find an online recipe try it.

my 2 cents

MrRook · Aug 30, 2024

I've never gotten sour when using fruit in any beer.

ChrisD123 · Aug 30, 2024

managed to get hold of some mango pulp (tinned) its sweetened...just wondered if this would be okay to use...and would i just add to fermenter after or during fermentation?

danglebell · Sep 1, 2024

fluketamer said:
no adding puree to beer wont necesssarily sour it.

especially if it is canned fruit puree with preservatives.

...

steve and james claim they can taste the passion fruit in there passion fruit pilsner (which sounds delish) using purees.

Had a listen and they said it was not sweet but sour, they put that to how passion fruit tastes, so that matches up with that I would expect if you add it to fermenter (have done before with orange and also lemon, and yes it does seep the flavour in but it doesn't add sweetness, not that I wanted sweetness with those). Their other video with putting it into the keg and racking on top is what I'm trying right now, though interested to hear that they said even the kegging one was sour according to some people.

ChrisD123 said:
managed to get hold of some mango pulp (tinned) its sweetened...just wondered if this would be okay to use...and would i just add to fermenter after or during fermentation?

If you put it in during primary then it will ferment the fermentable sugars out

MashBag · Sep 1, 2024

ChrisD123 said:
managed to get hold of some mango pulp (tinned) its sweetened...just wondered if this would be okay to use...and would i just add to fermenter after or during fermentation?

Add it once the Krausen is up nicely.

MashBag · Sep 1, 2024

@danglebell

Don't confuse 'sour beer' with 'sour or bitter" tasting.

Equally "sweet" into the fermenter doesn't necessarily get you "sweet" beer.

Some "sweet" will ferment. Some won't.

Choose your ingredients carefully.

MickDundee · Sep 1, 2024

MrRook said:
I've never gotten sour when using fruit in any beer.

Even intentionally making a sour beer with the Philly Sour yeast and fruit additions I struggle to get it sour enough for my tastes.

hoppyscotty · Sep 2, 2024

Most commercial beers with fruit I've tried have failed to convey much if any fruit flavour at all. Just tried a fruited sour from a well regarded UK brewery over the weekend and struggled to pick up any fruit flavour from it...it was a sour and just got the sourness and beyond that pretty bland full stop. Surprised they even let it go out of the door, if I had made it myself it wouldn't have been shared and might have even ended up down the drain. But then again I'm not a huge sour fan, just trying a few to see what all the fuss is about but yet to have that lightbulb moment.

There are only a small handful of commercial beers where I have got a nice balance of the fruit flavour. Even when I've been in Brussels and Bruges and sampled some of the many fruit beers on offer over there, they always leave me feeling a bit cheated regarding fruit flavour. Maybe my palate is not tuned for fruit flavours in beer.

I've only tried making two fruited beers, both IPA's, one a grapefruit IPA using a grapefruit concentrate where I added a few drop with a pipette and that came out OK...could have done with a bit more fruit coming through so maybe an extra half a drop would have done it but the problem with something so potent and highly concentrated you don't need much to overdo it. But it was far more successful than a Mango IPA where I added Mango puree at the tail end of active fermentation where I got little if any mango coming through. Had a little bit more success with a Saison I have done a couple of times that used real orange zest in the tail end of the boil and a ton of Mandarin Bavarian hops in the whirlpool and dry hop and a noticeable orange/tangerine flavour that others picked up on managed to get through to the final beer so that worked well considering there were a few other ingredients in that that had to also come through.

Would love to crack it as one of the best beers I've ever had is Stones Tangerine Express. I have no idea what they use but they have got a really good balance between a good base IPA, so you know you're drinking beer and not some fruit smoothie, and tangerine flavour that is up front and forward but is not sweet and well balanced in the beer. Actually probably the only fruited beer I've had that I really like.

Stu · Sep 2, 2024

hoppyscotty said:
Most commercial beers with fruit I've tried have failed to convey much if any fruit flavour at all. Just tried a fruited sour from a well regarded UK brewery over the weekend and struggled to pick up any fruit flavour from it...it was a sour and just got the sourness and beyond that pretty bland full stop. Surprised they even let it go out of the door, if I had made it myself it wouldn't have been shared and might have even ended up down the drain. But then again I'm not a huge sour fan, just trying a few to see what all the fuss is about but yet to have that lightbulb moment.

There are only a small handful of commercial beers where I have got a nice balance of the fruit flavour. Even when I've been in Brussels and Bruges and sampled some of the many fruit beers on offer over there, they always leave me feeling a bit cheated regarding fruit flavour. Maybe my palate is not tuned for fruit flavours in beer.

I've only tried making two fruited beers, both IPA's, one a grapefruit IPA using a grapefruit concentrate where I added a few drop with a pipette and that came out OK...could have done with a bit more fruit coming through so maybe an extra half a drop would have done it but the problem with something so potent and highly concentrated you don't need much to overdo it. But it was far more successful than a Mango IPA where I added Mango puree at the tail end of active fermentation where I got little if any mango coming through. Had a little bit more success with a Saison I have done a couple of times that used real orange zest in the tail end of the boil and a ton of Mandarin Bavarian hops in the whirlpool and dry hop and a noticeable orange/tangerine flavour that others picked up on managed to get through to the final beer so that worked well considering there were a few other ingredients in that that had to also come through.

Would love to crack it as one of the best beers I've ever had is Stones Tangerine Express. I have no idea what they use but they have got a really good balance between a good base IPA, so you know you're drinking beer and not some fruit smoothie, and tangerine flavour that is up front and forward but is not sweet and well balanced in the beer. Actually probably the only fruited beer I've had that I really like.

I'm with you on this. I find fruit beers rather full of promise and don't really deliver.

The exceptions are some of the lambic krieks. Don't get me wrong, they're not like a beery cordial or alcopop, but they definitely have taste.
Again, Badger's poachers choice (I think now called Cranborne Poacher?) was amazing in that you could taste the damson, but it wasn't overpowering.

As an aside, I had some Pompelmocello on Saturday. It's a sour-not-a-sour. Siren say it's sour, but I'd say it was more like a flavoured IPA.
I don't like sours and this was very drinkable - a perfect summer drink for a good day.
https://www.sirencraftbrew.com/item/230/SirenCraftBrew/Pompelmocello-440ml.html

danglebell · Sep 2, 2024

hoppyscotty said:
Would love to crack it as one of the best beers I've ever had is Stones Tangerine Express. I have no idea what they use but they have got a really good balance between a good base IPA, so you know you're drinking beer and not some fruit smoothie, and tangerine flavour that is up front and forward but is not sweet and well balanced in the beer. Actually probably the only fruited beer I've had that I really like.

I've done lagers with orange before, pack of 4 organic oranges, cut in half, squash fruit out then cut into quarters, add all juice and skin to pan to boil for a few minutes then put in when you begin fermentation, the result has a nice orange taste though beware it does start to fade after about 5 days in the keg and gets weaker. When I first tried it I was thinking "oh dear" as I did it then searched here and saw a bunch of posts about if you leave the pith in then it's undrinkable and bitter, that's complete tripe, it makes a great drink!

Back to the topic: finished the main ferment today and racked into the keg, I did mix it with a shake, had a bit of it and it's both good and bad, good because it tastes great but bad because it's a sort of weak raspberry taste, yet again believing another wrong comment on here where 1 bag of funkin' puree is "way too much" for 23l is yet another load of nonsense, the full pack would have been perfect, luckily can just put some into the glass then server the beer on top and mix before drinking. Would recommend overall, will have to see how it is once properly rested in a week

tl;dr: try things yourself and learn from that

LeeH · Sep 22, 2024

MickDundee said:
Even intentionally making a sour beer with the Philly Sour yeast and fruit additions I struggle to get it sour enough for my tastes.

You won’t with philly, kettle sours are simple and cheaper using probiotics.

Adding fruit puree without making a sour beer

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