[alekmager]

Hey, so I'm new to the wold of homebrewing and hope to get some advice on how to prepare my fruit to add to secondary. I have a 5 gal batch and figured 5 lbs of mangoes and 3 lbs of pineapple should suffice ( do not want to add to much and overpower anything). My plan was to use whole fruit and cut them up to freeze/thaw to break down cell walls for sugar release, puree in a food processor, than use a double boiler to pasteurize before i add to the bottom of my secondary fermenter in a muslin bag before racking.

My questions are:
Does my fruit ratio make sense?
Am I going overboard with preparation where i'll start to lose some flavors?
After pasteurizing, should i throw in all the liquids from the double boiler, and how much water should i use to pasteurize that volume of fruit with?

Any help would be much appreciated, as i said i am very new to this (this is my 3rd brew) and could definitely use some advice on fruit additions/preparations! Thanks!

[a10t2]

I think you're pretty good on the ratio; I use 1 lb/gal with mango. I've never tried starting with whole fruit though, just put frozen cubes in the blender with a little vodka (2 fl oz per pound of fruit is 2.5% ABV, which I figure is enough to sanitize) and dump it into the fermenter when fermentation is winding down. Pasteurizing the fruit will set pectin and result in haze, if you care about that sort of thing.

[alekmager]

I think you're pretty good on the ratio; I use 1 lb/gal with mango. I've never tried starting with whole fruit though, just put frozen cubes in the blender with a little vodka (2 fl oz per pound of fruit is 2.5% ABV, which I figure is enough to sanitize) and dump it into the fermenter when fermentation is winding down. Pasteurizing the fruit will set pectin and result in haze, if you care about that sort of thing.

thanks for the reply, im not so picky about the haze. Isnt pectin what causes haze in the new england ipas, just curious? What would that much vodka do to the abv of the overall brew? say 8lbs so 16 fl oz of vodka

[a10t2]

thanks for the reply, im not so picky about the haze. Isnt pectin what causes haze in the new england ipas, just curious? What would that much vodka do to the abv of the overall brew? say 8lbs so 16 fl oz of vodka

ABV would go down since you're adding 2.5% ABV solution to ~5% ABV (presumably) beer.

Assuming you did add 1 gal of that 2.5% puree to 5 gal 5% beer, it would end up at 4.6% ABV.