TOPIC:

Hi All
I am thinking of making a raspberry wheat beer as described in Greg Hughes's book "Home Brew Beer " P206 .
I says to add the fruit after 2 days in the fermentor.
What i'm worried about is an infection getting in ,i'm using frozen berries picked over the summer on our allotment .

can anyone give me advise on this ?
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You've a few options.

You can puree or blend the fruit and add a campden to the must to kill off anything on them. Or mush them up and heat them at around 72 degrees celsius for 10-15 minutes. I think you need to add pectic enzyme to prevent haze then just. You should get more juice out of them if you heat them up too.

Altenatively, some people just bung it in and hope the alcohol that's already been produced will kill any nasties.

Or you could sterilise the fruit in some high alcohol spirit like vodka but I'd be less inclined to do this for a wheat beer.

I use washed frozen fruit all the time. Make sure they're washed! Water will do. Worst case scenario is some wild yeast will contribute to fermentation but in my own experience wild yeasts are slow movers.

Some fruit may need to be macerated. A few seconds in a blender will do, and you get good results with them still frozen.

thanks <!-- s:) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!-- s:) -->