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Author Topic: the flavor of fruit in fruit beer  (Read 4821 times)

Offline pete b

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Re: the flavor of fruit in fruit beer
« Reply #30 on: September 29, 2015, 10:57:31 am »
I also think ripeness is a huge factor. When you think about it raspberries are always picked and used very ripe, they're either ripe or not. Peaches and strawberries often get picked underipe. The time between perfectly ripe and moldy is very short, sometimes 1 day. I get great peach flavor in mead using my own fresh picked ripe peaches (usually picked ripe and immediately frozen before using, actually). I know there is a chemical component to ripeness. Maybe its partly because most don't use very ripe fruit that the flavor doesn't come through.
Pete
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Offline homoeccentricus

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Re: the flavor of fruit in fruit beer
« Reply #31 on: September 29, 2015, 02:15:04 pm »
http://nzic.org.nz/ChemProcesses/food/6B.pdf

That link is completely about wine, not beer, but a great comparative list of compounds in grape juice before and after fermentation. This is where I think there is more than a simple sweet/acid vector in adding fruit to beer. There can be significant transfer of organic acids (more or less directly) as well as phenols. In particular, anthocyanins are bound to a sugar, but I am not sure of which sugar molecule or if the bond is cleaved in fermentation and the sugar used as a carbon source.

As to the flavor transfers, I suspect that raspberries water/sugar ratio is far less than strawberries, meaning far more strawberries needed per 5 gallons and probably some additional sugars to prevent dilution. I would also speculate that strawberry flavors and aromas are more volatile. I have had some strawberry melo's that were horribly astringent and unpleasant from the bulk of the seeds. All speculation of course.

The pdf is very interesting. The components of wine are (a.o.) carbohydrates, organic acids, phenolics, and flavor components. Since there are different types of organic acids they may play a role. I don't think the phenolics are at work here, because these are mostly tannins. The flavor components are interesting: mostly volatile monotherpenes (in wine well-known critters such as geraniol, citronell, and linalool.
Frank P.

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