Post
by Matt » Sun Jul 22, 2012 7:45 pm
I might be slightly late to the party here, but I recently brewed an apricot pale ale, and thought I'd share my experience in case anyone might find it helpful.
The base beer was a BIAB all-grain ale. Nothing very exciting - I can share the recipe if anyone's interested.
It stayed in the primary fermenter for five or six days, then spent a week in secondary. After fermentation had more or less died off, I added not one but two cans of our Vintner's Harvest apricot puree. I decided to use two cans based on some recommendations I found online and after reviewing a few recipes from other brewers who had reported good success.
The puree was added to an empty carboy through a sanitized funnel, and the beer was racked on top of it. Two cans of the stuff takes up a lot of room, so make sure your beer + puree will fit within one carboy, or be prepared to leave some beer behind.
After about two weeks of semi-cold crashing (that is, of being left on my cold basement floor), clarity was not where I wanted to be so I added a couple of teaspoons of pectic enzyme. This made a very dramatic difference in clarity within 48 hours, so I presume pectic enzyme is necessary if you're looking for clarity in beers when adding purees.
I bottled after another week or so and have been enjoying since then. The final flavours are not quite as intense as I was hoping. You get a lot of the apricot sourness, but not much else. One interesting observation is that the apricot flavour does come through a bit better as it warms up when serving. I'm pleased with the result, but not entirely satisfied as I was hoping for something with a level of flavour on par with St-Ambroise Apricot Wheat. It's been bottled for about a month and a half, so I'm still checking to see how it evolves with age. Perhaps the enzymes stripped out some of the flavour? I'm not sure. I know a lot of fruit beers from the 'big guys' rely on extracts for their flavour, so that may be the key for getting that really heavy level of frutiness that I'm after.
Primary Fermentation: Comfortably Numb English-Style Barleywine
Secondary Fermentation: none
Bottled: Coldstream Northern English Brown Ale, Apricot Pale Ale, Ironside Rye IPA, Chocolate Orange Stout,
I was thinking the one can of puree might not be enough based on most of the postings online so I thought preventing fermentation might help..fermented it is..
