PawPaw Saison? Advice please...

[Javaslinger]

So I'm thinking about trying my first fruit beer with a local Appalachian fruit called a PawPaw. It's flavor is sort of cross between a mango and a banana. I have seen pawpaw beers out there in the craft beer universe but usually they're a wheat beer or maybe a fruited blonde ale. I don't much care for either beer style so I thought why not a saison? I have seen fruited saisons on the interwebs...

The issue is that I have 1) never made a saison, and 2) never made a fruited beer...

The Saison style lends itself to quite a bit of variation both in grain bill, yeast or yeast/bacterial combos, and fermentation temps. What's best for a fruited beer?

For the fruit, again I know there are a lot of options of when and how to introduce it. I definitely want it to be a pawpaw beer, but not overpoweringly so. I have up to 5lbs (or more if necessary) of pawpaw pulp.

Do you need to sterilize or pasteurize the fruit pulp??

Ok, lots of questions... What say the experts (and the accompanying peanut gallery)?

Thanks!

Ken

 

[sborz22]

I will take on one aspect of this question. Freezing fruit has two benefits. It can help kill off many unwanted bugs and depending on the type of fruit (no idea what a pawpaw is) can break the
cell walls and allow more extraction of the fruit goodness.

After I freeze I also double boil the fruit to get a sort of fruit mash to add to the beer. Again, I do this in hopes that the simmer of fruit will help kill off any nasties.

Note that brewing with fruits often has the opposite of the assumed affect in that it does not add alcohol but actually slightly lowers the abv due to the added water of the fruit! This is usually very little in the grand scheme but 5lbs of paw paws in a saison of decent strength may be noticeable.

CHEERS!

 

[RPh_Guy]

Add fruit in secondary to maximize flavor. I have no idea how much.

If you want to avoid contamination, either heat pasteurize or use sulfite in the fruit for 24h before adding to the beer.

 

[TwistedGray]

Some thoughts/comments:

1:1 ratio is pretty common (fruit to gallons)
Growing up in WV, never had a pawpaw ;(
I never sterilize my fruit and so far so good
Add the fruit to the beer when it's nearly completed its fermentation (not sooner ... maybe later)
I don't like using fruit mash/puree because I sometimes find it hard to then separate from the beer (I use chunks)

 

[KonservativeJay]

I do not know much about saison and nothing about pawpaw but I have seen a thread on here about a banana beer that used 5 lbs of banana “mushed” up, frozen, then soaked in 8ozs of rum. That was added to a secondary and it sounds like they got very good banana flavor from that. Something similar might well work for your idea

PS, I totally count as the “peanut gallery” [emoji51]

 

[S-Met]

Search pawpaw on here, or in the wine forum. I just saw someone post this week about making a pawpaw wine. You may be able to help each other.