Adding Fruit flavor to beer

Pete-Hoff

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I wanted to get some advice on the best way to get fruit flavor into a beer. I recently brewed the Kolsch recipe below and after fermentation, I split the batch up into 2, 2.5gal batches. I kept one batch "traditional" and the other 2.5gal batch I wanted to experiment with by racking it onto ~2.0lbs of the Vintner's Harvest Sweet Cherry Puree. After about a week, tasted it and wasn't getting the cherry flavor I was expecting. Added the remaining, ~1.0lbs of puree from the can, gave it another week, and then kegged it. Even then, still not really getting any cherry flavor. I did notice fermentation seemed to kick back off a day or so after racking onto the puree so did all the cherry flavor ferment off??? I've kind of stayed away from extracts as some of the fruit ones I've used in the past have given a fake taste. I appreciate any suggestions. Thanks.

Kolsch | Kölsch Partial Mash Beer Recipe at Brewer's Friend (brewersfriend.com)
 
My holiday Cherry beer has about 15% puree that I add at fermentation. It has a noticeable cherry flavor, but does not overpower the beer. I noticed that the puree had a lot of pulp and skins, so a week or two in the secondary may not be enough. You might try the primary where the yeast can act on it, or use cherry juice.
 
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When you saying your beer is 15% puree, what exactly do you mean?
 
When you saying your beer is 15% puree, what exactly do you mean?
It is actually less. For a 5 gallon batch I add one can of puree which I think is 48 oz and 16 oz of cranberry juice. I shorten the water by the same amount so 5.5 gallons goes into the fermenter. If you are just adding puree I would use 64 oz. I've done more and done less, but have settled on this method.
 
I gotcha now. Maybe I could brew a full batch but split it up into 2 separate fermenters to try that method out. I still want to see what else I can do to improve the flavor be adding it to the secondary as well.
 
If you want to add to the secondary I would use fruit juice so all of it would make it's way to the keg.
 

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