Hello all. I’m still somewhat of a newbie at homebrew. I have about 6 brew sessions under my belt all extract at this point. I recently wanted to brew a blood orange IPA. I took my best recipe thus far (Northern Brewer’s “Fresh Squished IPA”) and brewed it last Saturday. All is looking well. At this point I am going to add the blood orange purée sometime during the final half of fermentation, As a starting point I was thinking of adding 1 cup of purée for each gallon (total of 5 cups for my 5 gal brew) and crashing the temp down to 55 to ensure the yeast would not consume the sugars. Looking for some thoughts and advice. Thanks in advance.
A little fermentation isn't a bad thing, and 55 is not that cold. If you bottle to carbonate, that puree counts as sugar, so consider that. If you keg, no problem then. The point is, a little fermentation will still happen at 55. At 36, not so much. But it needs to be that cold until you drink it... at 70 it will start to ferment again, right? Let some of it ferment and it will have much less tendency to want to ferment more, and even if it does, it wont be by much. Make sense?
The only way you can avoid fermenting sugars from additives is to add it to the keg after it's cold and then keep it cold through the entire time you have it in the keg. At that point you might as well just add it to the glass and mix it. Blood orange (or any other fruit) puree added at whirlpool is a great way to make a great IPA. If you want more intense orange flavor, as @Nosybear mentions, use orange zest.
And to restate JA's point another way, if you're bottling you really need to let that puree ferment out, or when you go to package you may have more sugar than you expect and create exploding bottles/cans. Is your puree aseptic? If not, you may want to pasteurise it before adding it to the fermenter if it isn't. Most won't add in microbes that will change the taste of your beer, but some can.
Yep, that makes sense. So at this point I am bottling and using a priming sugar and not kegging. Any advice on the best way to proceed by adding all of this extra sugar? I would prefer not to have beer bombs.
This makes sense. So what I hear is to let this go for a little while longer than normal to let the yeast finish it’s job. Thanks for the advice.
Since you've got a beer that's fermenting and haven't added any puree, about all you can do is get it in there and let it finish completely and then bottle. If you're opening a can of puree, you can dump it right in the fermenter (with as little oxygenating turmoil as possible). If you're measuring in, be certain that everything that touches the puree is glass or stainless and is clean and sanitized and get it in there with as little fuss as possible. You'll like the result. The flavor will stay in even though the sugars will ferment out. Next time you do it, just add the puree in when the wort cools to about 175-180 degrees just to be sure it's pasteurized. Even if you add it at a cooler temp, it will be fine straight out of the can.
