OnTap Magazine

It seems like a no-brainer, right? Adding some fruit to your brew should be as easy as adding any other ingredient. But sadly, it is not. The problem with fruit plus beer is threefold: 1. Fruit is largely composed of sugar (fructose) and water. And the brewer's friend, yeast, tends to ferment sugar until there is nothing left but alcohol and CO 2 . 2. Because of (1), you have to be careful when it comes to adding said fruit to your brew. 3. Fresh fruit is covered in wild yeast and (sometimes) bacteria that can spoil a good beer. Given the problems above, you might be forgiven for just giving up on the idea of brewing with fruit altogether. You wouldn't be alone. Many brewers will tell you to rather seek out fruity flavours by using other, more traditional beer ingredients that impart fruit- like flavours naturally, such as hops. Indeed, hops like Cascade and others can add distinctively grapefruit and tropical flavours to a beer. But what if you want to brew a watermelon wheat beer? Or a cherry APA? For some fruit flavours, you will have to use the real McCoy. While hop varietals are always on the increase, I suspect that there will always be a few fruit-like flavours they cannot mimic adequately. And besides, using fruit in your beer is just plain fun, so let's continue. FRUIT IS TRICKY THE IMPORTANCE OF TIMING THE FORM OF YOUR FRUIT Given that fruit can very easily ferment into nothingness (well, except for a few extra ABV points), you may have guessed that when to add it will be important. Of course, you can boil your fruit in the kettle along with all your primary ingredients and then add to the fermenter, but all you'll probably end up with is added sugar and very little fruit-like flavour. To really get the most out of your fruit, you will need to add it after primary fermentation for three very good reasons: 1. As mentioned before, fruit is mostly just sugar and water, so adding it before primary fermentation will add very little flavour, and 2. Given that fruit adds sugar, if you add it before primary fermentation, it will add alcohol, CO 2 and dryness to the beer that you may not want or have accounted for. 3. Fermentation itself, being a rather violent and gaseous process, will tend to blow off any latent fruit flavours leaving you with, again, just sugar and water. By adding fruit after primary fermentation has been completed, you will ensure that your beer actually tastes like it has fresh fruit as an ingredient. Also, because primary fermentation produces bacteria- killing alcohol, any resident nasties that may be living on the fruit will be taken care of. The next point to tackle is the type of fruit you'll add. It's worth considering whether you can substitute fresh fruit for a more processed alternative. For instance, some manufacturers produce a very good organic, no-added preservative fruit pulp that can be purchased frozen or canned. The benefit of this is that the fruit has already been pasteurised or washed, thus reducing the chances of contamination. Just be very, very sure that no sulfites or sorbates have been added since these preservatives interfere with yeast health. If you can't find good processed fruits, or you simply have a good supply of fresh fruit on-hand (i.e. you own a couple of fruit trees), you still have to process the fruit before adding it to your fermenter: 1. Wash the fruit very well in brew-quality water. Then wash it again. 2. Remove stems, leaves and other non- fruit matter (like bugs). 3. Pulp or puree the fruit. This increases fruit flavor and surface area for the beer to work with. You can also add a teaspoon of pectin to your pulp to increase juice production. 4. For a final anti-bacterial and anti-wild yeast measure, you can freeze the pulp and thaw it before use or bring it to a boil instead. It's not fool-proof and will change the flavour, but can remove additional risk of contamination. Once you've processed and sterilised your fruit, it's time to add it to the fermenter. You must first ensure that primary fermentation is complete, however. So either add it well into the fermentation schedule (i.e. one week after pitching your yeast) or even better, measure your gravity and add when the beer is within 20% of its final gravity target. Despite all the above measures, you can't really get away from the fact that fruit is pretty lightweight when it comes to flavour. So if you really want a good, solid fruit flavour, you will need to add lots of fruit. Indeed, to be on the safe side, I'd recommend aiming for about 1kg of fruit pulp per four litres of beer. So, for a typical 19-litre batch, you will need to add around 3-5 kg of fruit. Make sure that you use a large enough fermenter to account for that added volume of fruit lest you have a huge mess on your hands. The above figures assume that you will be using a relatively flavoursome fruit, such as cherries, grapefruit or raspberries. Avoid mild fruits like strawberries that tend to disappear in the fermentation process. Generally speaking, the sharper and more intense the fruit, the better for your final beer. QUANTITY IS KEY ontapmag.co.za | Spring 2022 | 45