Cedar Rapids Brewing Society

Concecration is ready for the secondary. I was going to run the dried currents through the food processor but then started to consider the 3-4 months that the brew will be in the secondary and was wondering if I needed to or should. Any suggestions?

Most of my fruit beers have used the canned puree, so I'd lean towards using the processor.

I have not not practiced this- as I have not used dried fruit to dry hop, but if I did I would loosely follow the instruction I recall.

If you are concerned about inducing an infection, I would run the currents through your food processor. And then try to sanitize them by soaking them with a little bit of distilled spirits, like a nice brandy or vodka; just enough to cover them.

Soak them overnight and dump the whole think into the secondary.

Brandy might provide a nice background flavor....vodka shouldn't provide any additional flavoring. Both might introduce a little bit of alcohol flavor if you use the cheap stuff. But using less than a 1/2 cup to a cup in a 5 gallon batch....the taste (of the distilled spirit) is probably lost.

In a mixed fermentation sach/brett/pedio/lacto beer, isn't acetobacter the only thing that could possibly infect it -- which can't do anything bad unless you let oxygen in?

An alternative to soaking in liquor might be to vat pasteurize the fruit. 20 minutes at 160 degrees Fahrenheit should suffice.

However, I'm not sure as to activating the pectins in the fruit.

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I made the concecration clone from more beer once and just dumped in the currants. Any fruit beer I make i just dump them in. No worries about infection. You already have a lot of alcohol in there.

Ok. A compromise....

Pour a rather large, nice brandy.

Dump the dried fruit into the brew.

Drink the brandy.

No worries!

That's the best process yet!

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I agree, CHEERS!

Thanks guys. I dumped the unprocessed currants into my wall mounted conical added the brew and put on a brand new sterilized bung and airlock. I'll let you know in September.

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But how was the brandy?

I am late into this, but I would have said, alcohol extraction and/or maybe a k-meta and sit for 36 hour.. You likely will be perfectly fine with your just dumping it in though as it's relatively hard to infect a finished beer-- sacrilege, to say this to brewers.. but still mostly true...