Adding Peaches to a Wheat Beer

[jasonclick]

I went to a beer fest over this past weekend and one of the beers I liked was a Peach Wheat Beer by RJ Rockers... I think the name was Son of a Peach. Anyways, I brewed a 5 gallon batch of Bell's Oberon Clone (wheat beer) last weekend. I was thinking I could siphon off 1 gallon and add peaches to it and try and make a peach wheat.

So the question is, how would I add peaches? Thanks.

[Ozwald]

Welcome to the forums, don't forget to head over to the New User section & give us asshats a proper introduction & tell us a little about yourself.

John Mallet is an awesome guy, haven't talked with him in a few years but I think Sol Sun was his recipe originally, which eventually got turned into Oberon. I miss that beer.

Adding any fruit to a beer, you have several options. For peaches, you could go the extract route. That would be my first choice. Brew the beer as normal, keg it up & when it's carbonated pour several 8oz samples. Put a drop in the first one, 2 in the 2nd, etc. Find where you like it & don't forget to double it for a pint. If you're not kegging, you can do the same with bottles, but I'd do a 6oz sample (1/2 a bottle). If you dial in your dose this time, you can add it to the batch before bottling next time. Kegging is easy, since you just pop open your keg, add it, close the keg & shake.

Peach can be a delicate flavor & even harder aroma-wise to get it to show up as peaches in the final product, which is why I'd advise going with actual fruit. It can be done, however. Chop up the peaches, I'd go fairly small chunks. Slightly freezing them first will make them much easier to cut into small cubes. After they're cut up, freeze them solid. This will help break up the cell walls within the fruit & make them more willing to give up their goodness to your beer. I'd go at a rate of slightly more than 1# per gallon. To add them, put them in your fermenter & rack the beer after primary fermentation is complete, on top of the fruit. Wait a few days & start taking samples every day until the flavor is where you want it. Then package.

[Dirk McLargeHuge]

Last time I did it, I used an extract, and it turned out fine. I used the whole 4 oz bottle in a keg. I've never tried peaches. SGTSatan tried it with peaches and got an extremely vaigarous fermentation. He still has peach stains on his ceiling. And the wall. And the carpet. That scared me off of fruit.

[Ozwald]

That scared me off of fruit.

We know better than that

[brewinhard]

If you plan on going the extract route, then you should check out Olive Nation extracts. They are a bit pricey, but quite potent which means more BANG for your BUCK! Their extracts have more aroma and flavor than the typical extracts you might find at the LHBS.

You could also try fruit purees. These are pre-sanitized and of high quality. 1 can (sanitize the top before opening with a sanitized opener) in a 5 gallon batch is a good starting point. They are easy to work with and take a lot of the guessing out of the job.

Real fruit is awesome to use, but a lot more work and sometimes more expensive. Oz has some good tips of which I will add one - after thawing the fruit, cut a 1 liter soda bottle in half which will fit right in the neck of a carboy so you can carefully add the fruit to your fermenter without much of a mess. Just be sure to sanitize everything that will come in contact with the fruit during transfers.

Some of my best fruit beers have obviously been with real fruit typically around 2#/gallon. It is expensive and time consuming, but also really rewarding when sharing those beers with others. My second best have been with puree, and third best with the olive nation extracts. Maybe a blend of some of these techniques will yield an even better beer.

My next idea is to incorporate real fruit juice to help aid in color and aroma of the final product. Seems like it might be a bit more concentrated than using the whole fruit.

[jasonclick]

I had my wife pickup some frozen peaches from Publix. I thawed them and cut them up. I soaked them in Rum (didn't have Vodka) to attempt to sanitize. When I sanitized the 1 gallon jug there was some foam left in it so I shook up the peaches in the foam.


I guess I'll let it sit for a few weeks and see how it turns out.

[GilesTH]

I had my wife pickup some frozen peaches from Publix. I thawed them and cut them up. I soaked them in Rum (didn't have Vodka) to attempt to sanitize. When I sanitized the 1 gallon jug there was some foam left in it so I shook up the peaches in the foam.


I guess I'll let it sit for a few weeks and see how it turns out.

Is vodka the best way to sanitize fruit (or cucumbers)? Listening to the 5star show from back in '06, the owner said that StarSan, when properly diluted, can apparently be consumed without any ill effects. Could I let the fruit sit in a StarSan solution overnight? How about sulfides? (That last one I read on a fruit thread over on Homebrew Talk. Some of the advice I see over there tends to be iffy, so I wanted to see what the experts over here thought.)

Ultimately, like Jasonclick (I'm assuming, anyway), I want to avoid cooking the fruit I'm going to use.

Also, do I need to consider the sugar content in extract for carbonation purposes if I'm bottle conditioning?

[Ozwald]

In my summer wheat, I use an undisclosed fruit/herb mix that I would liken along the likes of peaches (not by flavor, but in delicateness). I've always done a pasteurization to the mix before adding it to 'secondary'. Oven on the lowest setting, door cracked & stir frequently. It's never adversely effected the flavor. If I was doing peaches, I'd do something similar, but I'd also touch up with extract at packaging. My $0.02