Abv for fruit added in secondary.

[fivepointslow]

I did a search but turned up nothing, maybe it's me...

So the question is if I know the OG and FG of a beer then add fruit and that ferments. How do I really know the true abv?

Could I simply get a refrac reading of the fruit and add that gravity into some equation?

Had a 5.5% beer that I added 2lbs of prickly pear to and it was amazing!! However it would put you on your ass lol. Very sneaky beer.

 

[m00ps]

Youll need to figure out the total sugar content of whatever fruit you are adding. So lets say 1 apple has 15g sugar (random guess). If you add 5 chopped apples thats about 75g sugar. So you put the equivalent 75g sugar into a beer tool. According to my calcs, it adds 0.002 to the OG, so now you know the "true" OG. The FG reading you can just take as normal. Those 2 readings give you the abv. This method you can add the fruit whenever

Got it?

 

[chickypad]

There is a good read here which points out then when adding fruit you are also adding volume/water. Depending on the fruit and the beer you may be slightly upping the ABV or slightly lowering it. Seems to me the calculations are much easier with juice. I don't think he explains how you get the Brix on fresh fruit.

 

[zoomzilla]

Basically adding whole fruit to your beer is actually diluting it. Dried fruit or fruit juice concentrate is a much better way of adding both abv and fruit flavor.

 

[fivepointslow]

Thanks guys