ABV/original (??) gravity of fruit beers?

So how to you figure ABV and relevant gravities for fruit beers?

I brewed 2 gallons with an o.g. of 1.040 today. I'll add about 4 lbs of apricots friday or next week. I suppose I could take a specific gravity right before adding the apricots and right after adding the apricots but I don't think I can assume the sugars of the apricots got thouroughly mixed. I could wait a day after adding the apricots but then I wouldn't know howmuch of the apricot sugars were fermented within the day.

Of course if I knew the sugar content of the apricots.... but I don't.

Or does one just never know?

I found this to be one of the most helpful things I have read regarding ABV and fruit. If you're not familiar with the mad fermentationist he also writes articles for BYO and has done podcasts on brewing radio and beersmith.

I'm a little surprised. I was assuming the low gravity 1.040 of the recipe was because the fruit sugar would boost it up. Guess I was misinformed.

Hmmm, so the answer is fudge it and fake it? I mean I *can* live with that I guess but I'd rather be precise. There are pages that tell how much sugar is *usually* in fruit (only about 50 grams per pound). Not sure what ammount of volume the fruit will add.

Oh, well.

Well, I guess if you don't want to use the average from pages or tables like this then you'd have to measure the brix of the actual fruit you're using - not sure how this is done. My take on the article was it was reassuring to hear that for the average gravity beer there's just not enough of an effect to make a noticeable difference. Therefore I RDWHAHB on my fruit beers.

chickypad said:

Well, I guess if you don't want to use the average from pages or tables like this then you'd have to measure the brix of the actual fruit you're using - not sure how this is done. My take on the article was it was reassuring to hear that for the average gravity beer there's just not enough of an effect to make a noticeable difference. Therefore I RDWHAHB on my fruit beers.

Click to expand...

No, I'll do a rough estimate. Just... well, kind of no point pretending the numbers really matter when they don't. I'm also a bit surprised this will be such a low gravity beer. Doesn't really matter but... well, I'm just surprised.

I wasn't really intending to do any fruit beers for a while but a friend talked me into fruit picking so...