Advice on a peach IPA

[TheDopeGodfather]

Hey guys. I'd love some feedback on a peach IPA I'm planning to brew in a few weeks. Especially looking for advice on when to add the fruit and how much. I've got fresh frozen peaches that I'm planning on blending into a puree with a little bit of vodka for sterilization. Then I was gonna let the puree sit in the vodka overnight before adding to secondary for a week or so. Let me know your thoughts.

https://community.grainfather.com/recipes/423686

 

[Vallka]

I do a Mango NEIPA, I puree the mango and add it with about 3-5min left in the boil, this sterilizes the fruit. I have puree'd the mango and then heated it up in a pot to pasteurize it then add the fruit once during whirlpool, once during fermentation..3 days in, once 8 days in. I have used fresh fruit, frozen fruit and pure fruit juice.
The best beer has been with puree frozen fruit added 3-5min before flame out. this means not worries about sanitizing....hope this helps.

(I have also made a NEIPA with peaches the same way)

 

[Nosybear]

Peach beer is a pain in the a**. Ask me how I know.... You need so much of it to get any perceptible peach flavor at all, and that's using Colorado Western Slope peaches picked specifically for beer (that is, too ripe to sell in stores). By so much, 10 pounds per gallon is a minimum. That means a lot of gunk in the bottom of the carboy and it doesn't settle well, just kind of suspends itself . So you rack off the half of your beer you can save without siphoning fermented peach pulp into your secondary fermentor and eventually taste to find that you have barely any flavor from the gunky mess you made.... Needless to say I'm not too keen on trying another peach beer but here are some ideas:
1. Don't try it in an IPA: Peach flavor is too delicate. You'll lose it in the hops. Try it in a Helles or Koelsch-style, maybe a Blonde. I'd favor the lager - ale esters could overwhelm peach flavor.
2. Try using peach juice to avoid the gunk issue. If you could find peach juice concentrate, even better.
3. Use apricots instead. They taste like peaches, only much stronger.
4. Use a peach flavoring (natural of course).
5. Spring for the Amoretti highly concentrated puree.

 

[Daniel Parshley]

I do a Mango NEIPA, I puree the mango and add it with about 3-5min left in the boil, this sterilizes the fruit. I have puree'd the mango and then heated it up in a pot to pasteurize it then add the fruit once during whirlpool, once during fermentation..3 days in, once 8 days in. I have used fresh fruit, frozen fruit and pure fruit juice.
The best beer has been with puree frozen fruit added 3-5min before flame out. this means not worries about sanitizing....hope this helps.

(I have also made a NEIPA with peaches the same way)

Is that add 3-5 min or add and boil for 3-5 min?

 

[Vallka]

Is that add 3-5 min or add and boil for 3-5 min?

Add With 3-5 min left in the boil, but has to be a puree,this gives the heat time to sterilize the fruit, if it is chunks the heat might not get to the middle of the fruit. This might be overkill but....safe not sorry. Doing it with 3-5min left I found keep the aroma of the mango in the finished beer.

 

[Vallka]

Peach beer is a pain in the a**. Ask me how I know.... You need so much of it to get any perceptible peach flavor at all, and that's using Colorado Western Slope peaches picked specifically for beer (that is, too ripe to sell in stores). By so much, 10 pounds per gallon is a minimum. That means a lot of gunk in the bottom of the carboy and it doesn't settle well, just kind of suspends itself . So you rack off the half of your beer you can save without siphoning fermented peach pulp into your secondary fermentor and eventually taste to find that you have barely any flavor from the gunky mess you made.... Needless to say I'm not too keen on trying another peach beer but here are some ideas:
1. Don't try it in an IPA: Peach flavor is too delicate. You'll lose it in the hops. Try it in a Helles or Koelsch-style, maybe a Blonde. I'd favor the lager - ale esters could overwhelm peach flavor.
2. Try using peach juice to avoid the gunk issue. If you could find peach juice concentrate, even better.
3. Use apricots instead. They taste like peaches, only much stronger.
4. Use a peach flavoring (natural of course).
5. Spring for the Amoretti highly concentrated puree.

Ya my Peach was not that great, got 8lb of peaches from neighbors tree, won't do another one with peach.

 

[Daniel Parshley]

Add With 3-5 min left in the boil, but has to be a puree,this gives the heat time to sterilize the fruit, if it is chunks the heat might not get to the middle of the fruit. This might be overkill but....safe not sorry. Doing it with 3-5min left I found keep the aroma of the mango in the finished beer.

Thank you. Very helpful critical information.

 

[thunderwagn]

From what I understand, Odell Brewing dropped peach from their Treeshaker because it was such a pain in the ass. They even had an explanation on their label why the beer wasn't clear and had floaty type stuff (not verbatim). This year they've moved to mango which isn't bad, but their peach Treeshaker was fantastic imo.

 

[TheDopeGodfather]

Well I'm now extremely discouraged and slightly depressed. Thanks everyone.

Ok, here's my new plan. Let me know what you guys think. I have five pounds of sliced frozen peaches. I am going to dice them up into small cubes, put them in a big hop sack, and soak them in however much vodka it takes to cover most of the bag. Then, on day two or three of fermentation (while I can still get away with opening the fermenter and not risking oxidation) I'm going to dump in the bag, and some of the (now flavored) vodka. Hopefully the hop sack will keep most of the floaties at bay, and the vodka will have soaked up some of the flavor, and sterilized the fruit. Plus I'll have some leftover peach-flavored vodka to make cocktails.

What do you guys think? (And hurry, cause brew day is tomorrow.)

 

[Iliff Avenue Brewhouse]

Sounds like that could be a considerable amount of vodka. Don’t add that during fermentation.

I would just purée the peaches and add them in the bags a few days into fermentation.

I have added straight puréed fruit into the fermenter and it was a mess however it just equated to less packaged beer. A bag would be preferable to me.

if you want to go the tincture route I would just get extract instead.

 

[thunderwagn]

Hmm, I think I'd be tempted to add the vodka tincture at kegging or bottling time and ditch the fruit. I've done this with peppers with great results. No experience with peaches though.

 

[TheDopeGodfather]

I'm really concerned about ruining five gallons of an otherwise great NEIPA. I think I might just brew the same recipe but skip the peach all together. Maybe I'll try it later with a three gallon batch in case shit goes sideways. I would be really depressed if I had another failed batch of beer. The last two batches I brewed (and fermented both at the same time) went bad because of a ferm temp malfunction, and yeast esters were out of control.

Maybe I'll just play it safe with this batch.

 

[Nosybear]

I'm really concerned about ruining five gallons of an otherwise great NEIPA. I think I might just brew the same recipe but skip the peach all together. Maybe I'll try it later with a three gallon batch in case shit goes sideways. I would be really depressed if I had another failed batch of beer. The last two batches I brewed (and fermented both at the same time) went bad because of a ferm temp malfunction, and yeast esters were out of control.

Maybe I'll just play it safe with this batch.

Drink the IPA and make cobbler out of the peaches?

 

[TheDopeGodfather]

Drink the IPA and make cobbler out of the peaches?

This is what my wife is voting for. Except it's smoothies instead of cobbler. I think I'm gonna play it safe.

 

[Vallka]

Don’t add the peaches or vodka, Nosy has the right idea or as you said, do a two gallon batch and add all the peaches or separate two gallons of the next batch for the peaches. Smoothies sound great!!!
But, keep brewing don’t let a few bad batches spoil the whole bunch.

 

[GFHomebrew]

Adding fruit period is like rolling the infection dice with brewing I recon.
If I were to brew something with peaches it wouldn't be an exy brew like NEIPA I'd rely on the hops to bring the fruit.
I'm brewing a blond ale atm with a fair hunk of passionfruit in it I might just eat/drink my words yet.

 

[Nosybear]

As with all things brewing, microbe control is key. Pasteurized fruit doesn't somehow seem as "authentic" but it will keep your beer from becoming infected. Heat it up to about 160 degrees F, hold it there 20 mins and no infection. But then, you're dealing with fruit that has been heated, some might even say cooked. There's the option of buying aseptic purees but that takes some of the fun out of it and you can't just go out to your fruit tree and pick it. I love the idea of a Palisade Peach Blonde but a) a late freeze destroyed most of the crop and b) peaches are just a pain to work with.

 

[Craigerrr]

IMHO that you can get some pretty incredible fruit flavors naturally from:
Choice, amount, and timing of hops.
Type of yeast
Adding zest, or peels late in the boil.
I would not want any more fruit flavoring in the batch I kegged this morning. Outside of the hops, and VOSS yeast, the only addition was 2 oz of dried tangerine peel during a 20 minute whirlpool.
I don't even get tangerine from it (right now), more like a mango feel and flavor.

 

[Iliff Avenue Brewhouse]

Never had an issue adding fruit directly to

IMHO that you can get some pretty incredible fruit flavors naturally from:
Choice, amount, and timing of hops.
Type of yeast
Adding zest, or peels late in the boil.
I would not want any more fruit flavoring in the batch I kegged this morning. Outside of the hops, and VOSS yeast, the only addition was 2 oz of dried tangerine peel during a 20 minute whirlpool.
I don't even get tangerine from it (right now), more like a mango feel and flavor.

I agree about the zest for sure I add orange zest with dry hops and love the results but I also like citrus a lot.

 

[thunderwagn]

I wouldn't give up on it if it's really what you wanted. What do you have to lose? There is lots of information out there on brewing peach ipa's to help you out and it may take a few brews to get it nailed down, but there are some great ones out there, so it can obviously be done. I'd for sure start with a double ipa base to have a decently sweet backbone to help accent the peach, and like @Craigerrr mentioned above, hop selection can really help also.