0

Does anyone know anything about Tincture? I know adding fruit to beer can be unsanitary. Would it work to Tincture fruit and add to my brew secondary?

1
  • 1
    Your questions is more likely to be answered if you explain what you mean by "tincture method", maybe with a link. Jan 7, 2015 at 14:42

3 Answers 3

4

While I've made vodka-based tinctures of all sorts of spices and herbs for addition to beer, I think the volume needed for fruit would be problematic. While most spices are used in the 1oz/5gl ratio and you can get away with a couple-hundred mL of tincture addition, most fruit additions are closer to 1lb/1gl, where a couple-thousand ml of tincture will really start to add up.

I've had plenty of success adding cleaned then frozen fruit directly to secondary. Between the freezing, presence of alcohol and lowered pH of secondary, contamination is less of a concern.

1

I have added fruit directly to my secondary, once after boiling, and once after freezing. Both times worked.

From what I've read the tincture method is to disolve the flavor in spirits (similar to making sloe gin http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/sloegin_7722 )

Do you mean to add spirits to the brew? I would approach this with caution. Too much alcohol will kill the yeast (hence wines peaking at 13-15%)

Instead perhaps treat it as fortifying the drink, by adding the spirit after fermentation is ceased. (Similar to fortified wine)

0

"Would it work to Tincture fruit and add to my brew secondary?"

It'll work, but the real answer depends entirely on what you're hoping to accomplish.

Assuming you're doing something like this, you'll most likely:

-End up with a noticeably more alcoholic beer (as others have mentioned). Consider that adding 16 oz. of 40% ABV liquor to a 5 gal. batch of 5% ABV beer will boost the overall ABV to almost 5.9%. I could easily see needing at least a pint of liquor to tincture a pound of fruit properly.

-Get a different fruit flavor than you would by conditioning on whole fruit. Soaking fruit in higher alcohol solutions should favor extraction of alcohol-soluble flavor and aroma compounds over water-soluble ones, whereas in beer the balance is in favor of water-soluble compounds. I've never done it before though, so I can't speak to what the difference would actually be. My guess is it would taste more 'extract-y'.

With that in mind, there's absolutely nothing about it that won't "work" so no reason you shouldn't try it if it appeals to you.

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.