Never Half-Ass Two Things. Whole-Ass One Thing.
-Ron Swanson
The 2021 Fruit season is finally over here, and good lord, I need a beer. It's the busiest time of year here and I never seem to have enough freezer or fermenter space.
After so many hours processing fruit, moving beer around barrels and blending tanks I thought I'd share some wisdom. This is my evolving learnings on using fresh, whole fruit and the only certainty is it will continue evolving.
This is a post for those interested in using whole fruit - perhaps local, maybe you can find and drive to an orchard to buy a few boxes. I know fruit purees are en vogue, and there's nothing wrong with that... but you don't need my help, the product is as straightforward as adding malt extract in beer making.
The best I can offer in bone fides is fruited mixed ferm beer is my "thing." Another one of my other hobbies is growing stonefruit, rubus berries, strawberries, rhubarb, botanicals for beer on my modest proprety. These are easily the best beers I make and I have some accolades to show for it.
I. Sourcing & Working with Orchardists
I'm fortunate to live in Hood River County, an orchard county. I have a hobby orchard of 20 trees myself (any more and it would be a part-time job) that I have to rigorously maintain and do my part to treat disease and prevent fungus and pests from propagating in the valley. My neighbors are all orchardists. I've learned some things about their world.
Most orchardists sell for pennies on the dollar to fruit packers vs. what you pay at a grocery store, all nicely displayed. Some of them have another "consumer" channel i.e. a fruit stand, where they have a couple workers sell onesie-twosie fruits to agro-tourists. To me this is a branding exercise, it's for city people who want to buy apples they've never heard of before and take a tractor ride or whatever. It's extra margin and ways to use the land, and I'm all for it because it connects people to the food.
But when you're in the market for 10-50lbs of fruit (homebrew scale) you're kind of in between these, which is tough. You wouldn't want to walk up to a fruit stand and ask for two boxes of peaches... you'll pay city slicker prices that range from $2-3/lb.
Your best bet is looking for smaller family-run orchards who have a decent social media presence, likely a direct-to-consumer channel, like a fruit stand or pickup box/CSA. If you explain that you want to use their fruit for making beer that will showcase their fruit (which is not a commodity to them or you), they might sell you some at $0.50-$2 / lb. It really depends on their year, their crop, their existing contracts and such. Frankly, orchardists are wonderful people - they're farmers, who have a very climate sensitive and labor intensive crop. Make it easy on them by picking up on their terms (I tell them the riper the better, but if they have fresh boxes I will go get them). Once you have a relationship, and you love the fruit, you're in the money.
II. Fruit Choices... Varietal, Quality, Ripeness
Unsurprising this is the longest section, because it's the biggest impact to the beer.
Something like a Peche or Kriek is not a commodity. You don't just toss any old barley malt to make a German Pilsner. Fruit Purees are a commodity insofaras not knowing if you're getting Montmorency, Meteor, North Stars, or the prized Balatons, but my experience is they are very good quality! I even use them in a pinch when I need apricot, raspberry etc. and can't source them.
Beer that has aged 12-24 months is not a commodity either, it's precious, and deserves treatment in kind for the fruit. A novice mistake is that fruit delicious on the table = great in beer. Fermentation removes the sugars, and aging on the flesh, skin, potentially seeds/pit will produce very different characteristics. Montmorencies will suddenly have baking spices, vanilla, and noyeaux after a month.
Frankly this comes down to experimentation and sampling these varietals in other beers. There are good fruit-focused beermakers around the US and EU now, they aren't hard to find, the great ones advertise the varietal of fruit, even the orchard or source.
Fruit choice - there are fleshy fruits, from watermelon to citrus to peaches, these have low/no usable skin, lots of juicy pulp/flesh, quite a bit of sugar and water. Even blueberries err on the side of fleshy despite having a characterful skin.
Because fermentation metabolizes those sugars into wonderful things, you tend to need quite a bit of it, or be selective about how that fruit is processed or which parts are used. Rates of 4lb/gal or 400g/L+ are not unheard of here and don't be surprised if these fall off quickly after packaging. The very watery fruits can be "cooked down" or dehydrated to concentrate without diluting the beer. Just be mindful this throws off your fruiting rates.
Then there are small/intense fruits like small sour cherries, grapes, rubus berries. The ratio of sweet flesh to skin, seeds, etc. is quite a bit lower here. These fruits can easily contribute a lot of character at rates of 1lb/gal or just 100g/L, especially with something like raspberry, blackberry or currant.
Lastly there are the odds and ends - strawberries with their unique external seeds can get a bit plasticky. Rhubarb isn't a fruit, but it's great in funky beer... if you get the nice ruby red stalks. Apples and pears are generally juiced and can be somewhat neutral or very malic. Carrots make a nice addition too. These are just unique enough that they deserve they own write up.
As a general rule of thumb, 2lbs/gal or 240g/L is a good baseline fruit rate. If you have some local Mungberries or Tayfruit, these might be good starting points. With a good sour program, you can always blend back to remove some fruit intensity, you can't blend the other way.
Quality - you can buy seconds, they are usually half the cost. Often they have aesthetically unpleasant defects that you may need to remove by hand in processing. That's not a big deal for peaches, but half-rotted cherries are no fun. Again - two year old beer, I'm not going to save $13 at this point with shitty fruit.
Ripeness - the real wisdom here is overripe fruit makes great beer, just-ripe fruit often does not (remember the fruit less the sugar exposes EVERYTHING, including green flavors. Think about dry-hopping with a grassy underdeveloped hop). Ideally this happen on the tree, you pluck them, go right into the kitchen, and into the beer. But realistically, you're sitting on that fruit for 2-3 days before it reeks on the kitchen table and invites the neighborhood of fruit flies, and is ready to be used or frozen. I buy boxes of fruits I can't grow, of which paper bags fit around perfectly. One bag goes on one end, one on the other overlapping the first, sealing them from fruit flies. Fruits will ripen on their own gases, it works well. Check every day. The worst is when half the fruit is ripe and half is underripe. These are probably from a poorly pruned tree or bad orchard layout where sun is unevenly reaching those fruits. It happens... but refer to #1 because I am at least paying for consistency as part of that quality.
III. Processing & Preservation
Don't overthink this. I used to go nuts worrying about sanitation of this fruit, anything getting in the beer. Yet the beer is protected by its low pH (ostensibly) and alcohol, hops. The biggest decision you have to make is do you de-seed/pit, and how do you allow the beer to access the full fruit in the timeframe you intend to macerate?
Cherries, for example, are a huge pain to pit at the homebrew scale. I did it one year, never again. The pit contributes something in the way of almond-woody character, but it's not much for cherries. Apricots and peaches... not so much, you want that thing out of there or you'll have a noyaux bomb. I pit plums too, but I only use freestones to make this easier. Again, learning varietals helps including freestone vs clingstone. Some clingstones are worth it on larger fruits.
An important note on what carries over into the beer is whether you want the wild microbes, and what topical sprays were used during growth. I have the benefit of learning about these directly and choosing which ones I want to use to save my crop. Some orchardists go nuclear, others go purely organic though they'll charge more for the fruit. I always give the fruit a rinse as the first step, to remove any final spray residue.
You can pasteurize if you want - 180F for a few minutes should do it, vacuum sealed baggies in a large stock pot of hot water work well, and can go right in the freezer if need be. You can also treat it as you would conventionally with wine grapes, metabisulfate and potassium sorbate.
IV. Preparing and Selecting the Beer
Don't overlook the springtime preparation, wherein all of the hard work of the last few brew seasons culminates to determine what fruits would be good for the beer. I feel like many people think I want to make a Peach + Nectarine beer, then take whatever mixed ferm beer they have around, and force it onto the fruit.
Of course you can make a "Peche" that way, but the way I run my mixed ferm program is to have some barrels, some stainless beer, some stuff in carboys. I sample these regularly (typically monthly after the 6 month mark), and take notes. The barrels are generally solera beers so once the culture is established, I don't see a ton of drift. To that end, there are beers that already have some nice stonefruit and tropical esters that might be great for peaches or plum. There's the more funky barnyard beers I might leave unfruited, or dry hop, or make a more funky Kriek. There are pinot barrel aged beers that have a lot of tannic oak character and might go well with darker fruits. Bottom line - I am thinking about A) what fruit would pair well with this beer? and B) is this beer continuing to improve, or is it mature? The beer will tell you when it's done.
Blending can surely have its own write up, but often with fruit I am using what's left over after selecting for the best unfruited stuff. You can hide a little rubbery aroma under pounds of cherries, though this is also when I'm dumping stuff... garbage into fruit, garbage out of fruit. Generally I'm looking for one beer to be the "lead vocal" wherein from my notes I have "would go great with white grapes." Then I'm blending to perhaps add something more oaky, or less sour, or a bit more hop-derived funk. I also blend post-fruit, typically to balance acidity. But anything that can be done ahead of fruit season... should be done ahead of fruit season. It gets real busy with drawing from, and refilling barrels, on top of processing all the fruit and sanitizing half a dozen things for the cellar work. And you aren't even brewing!
V. Think Ahead to Packaging
Fruit is messy, and it's deceivingly messier using whole fruit vs puree, because puree tends to settle reasonably well and not form clogworthy chunks.
So over time I started to incorporate filtration into my secondary (tertiary) fruiting tank. That could be a false bottom or racking cane mesh filter - I use the latter. Just make sure you have ample surface area for that screen, you can't just stuff it over the end... you need several inches to prevent full clogs (which can be undone with backflow and patience).
I also highly recommend using something with a spigot for sampling and transferring/bottling. A bucket with a good seal is just fine.
VI. The Big Day - Adding Fruit to Beer
...is wrong! Add beer to fruit. Dumping fruit on top of your beer adds unnecessary oxygen to the process and oxygen is very much our enemy at this stage, even with refermentation about to begin.
By that I mean if you have a 3 gallon carboy full of beer, and 10-12 lbs of fruit, get yourself another 5 gallon carboy, or a bucket (this would be your secondary/tertiary fermentation vessel). Sanitize it, add your processed fruit to it, let it get near room temperature if applicable.
Optional would be purging the second vessel of oxygen - I do this, because I am a LODO guy in general, I want the margin of safety while the yeast re-activates (see below) and beer starts to access the fruit sugars.
Optional but highly recommended is adding some fresh yeast with the fruit before racking beer, even some yeast nutrient. This can just be an active culture of your favorite brett/dregs, etc. I use my favorite "bottling brett" strain - it's vigorous and fast. Keep in mind whatever yeast you use here will be quite active in your bottle reconditioning too.
But in a pinch... I have a going CBC-1 packet that I open with sanitized gloves, add a couple grams, roll right back up and put back in the fridge. Not a best practice but dry yeast is getting expensive these days!
And yes, Brett is hardy and eventually the culture that came over with your beer and the wild stuff on the fruit to will kick back up, but when that beer has been aging for months or years, the dormant yeast can take days, even a week to activate.
VI. Punchdowns
These get their own small section, because while I consider them optional, many professional brewing operations use them. I recommend trying your fruit beer in a carboy to get a visual - what you'll likely see is some fruit sinking to the bottom, some floating on top, with CO2 bubbles propping them up. The driver and concern for punching down (pushing the fruit down or pumping liquid back over the top) is a fewfold:
1. Prevent mold growth that might appear at the surface (I have personally never seen this happen)
2. Ensure the fruit is fully accessible and can be extracted
3. Free up the cap and allow everything to collect at the bottom.
Oxygen is again your enemy here, and I'm as paranoid about this because I've had it ruin too many beers. To that end, I hook up CO2 to my sample valve and bubble it through gently, while punching down. The punchdown itself should be done very gently, I use a stainless potato masher. If you have a small neck, you're limited as to what you can do here, but whatever you do, don't "swirl" the beer with the utensil. Worst case is you don't lift the lid at all, just swirl the entire fermenter while it's sealed to try to break things up a bit.
VII. When Is It Finished?
There are a lot of schools of thought here... maceration can last months, or days. My experience is there's three layers to extraction happening:
1. First 24-48 hours you get the simple, sweet, syrupy fruit flavor, color and aroma. If it's sweet cherries, you get ludens cough crops. These are the brightest flavors, and the residual sugars can be quite appetizing.
2. Next 2-3 weeks you get the more nuanced characteristics of that varietal, that orchard, etc. You might get cinnamon or vanilla notes from Montmorency cherry. You might get some merlot/pinot notes from italian plums, along with the high pectin content. If your fruit was underripe (which is to say merely ripe), it will show here as the "green"
3. Subsequent weeks and months extract the final bits... from everything. The seeds of the raspberry might add some herbaceousness, the pits of the cherries will add almond/noyaux. You'll get the full tannic skin character from some berries, and the beer might be quite dry now.
VIII. Transferring, Packaging
Again I'll steer clear of general packaging recommendations (e.g. crown vs. cork and crown vs. cork and cage). The biggest thing with this beer is that it benefits from natural reconditioning, though I've had some great beers that were force carbed and counter-pressure bottle filled.
I'll give my method which perhaps uncouth, and has probably evolved more than any component in my process:
1. I chill/crash my beer down for 2 days, encouraging any fruit and yeast to settle. You don't NEED to do this, but it helps with getting a clean transfer.
2. Calculate priming sugar for honey, or dextrose. I like what honey does for the effervescent head, and I go for 3.5 volumes. Add this and perhaps a bit of fresh bottling yeast (in my case, brett) to the keg, then purge it if you're paranoid like me (some dissolved oxygen in theory is okay at this point, but I still look at it as an unnecessary risk)
3. Slowly move the beer into a final keg/bucket and move to packaging.
What I DO NOT DO is add the priming sugar/honey to the fruit vessel, and bottle off of that. It simply won't mix well, and mixing the liquid isn't an option now. Please don't do this or you'll get a combination of gushers and poorly carbonated beers.
If you're bottling, you probably have a couple hours to complete the process before the yeast is really scavenging the oxygen present, assuming you crashed the beer. I purposefully space out the keg transfer and bottling to make sure it kicks right up. I usually leave half in the keg to naturally carbonate and serve on draft after a couple weeks, while the bottles enjoy their long goodnight... hence why it's not a waste of a keg!
VIX. Conditioning and Enjoyment
Fruited mixed ferm beers enjoy the "grazing brachiosaurus" shaped graph of quality. They NEED to condition, ideally for 6-12 weeks, that's the neck of the dinosaur. I start my bottles in my 72F ferm closet (22C) for a couple weeks, then move to the 55F (11C) cellar for conditioning and preservation.
DRINK THESE BEERS! This is NOT GUEUZE... fruit brings a brightness, a vividness that is ephemeral. It's not so different from dry hopping! Sure, I've had 12-year aged Vigneronne that was amazing, but I'd rather have had it within 12 months of packaging. If anything that's a testament to the base beer than to how the grapes aged.
To that end, I think between 3-9 months after bottling is the peak enjoyment of the beer. After that, the vivid, bright fruit simply falls off and you're likely to perceive more acidity (to the point that it's downright aggressive). Further development is a credit more to the beer than the fruit. The more intense tannic fruits (grapes, rubus, currants) can enjoy an extended aging past this mark to both mellow and bring balance.
X. Afterthought
Fruit beers are having a heyday, mostly because puree'd kettle sours are really popular. Nothing wrong with that. But just as a 1-3 year old mixed fermentation project is a thumbprint beer that can never be truly replicated, fruit is a seasonal climate-based agricultural product that can use beer as a canvas. Vintners have known this for thousands of years, but beermakers can explore this world with reverence and care to create something truly exceptional.
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