Anyone ever prime with fruit puree?

[rjschroed]

My buddy has been begging me to make some peach wheat beer for about a year now so I finally gave in and told him if he helped me out I'd do it. So tomorrow we are brewing a peach wheat. I'll include the recipe below but what I'm wondering is if anyone has ever primed with fruit puree? The recipe I use calls for 3lbs of it and claims it has an potential SG of 1042ish. I'm sure given this info I can find what I need to know on an amount to prime with but has anyone ever had success with this?

 

[rjschroed]

Recipe that I forgot:

5.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 38.23 %
5.00 lb Wheat Malt, Ger (2.0 SRM) Grain 38.23 %
0.50 oz Hallertauer [6.00 %] (60 min) Hops 10.1 IBU
0.50 oz Hallertauer [6.00 %] (30 min) Hops 7.7 IBU
1.00 oz Hallertauer [6.00 %] (5 min) Hops 4.0 IBU
2.00 oz Peach Extract (Bottling 5.0 min) Misc
3.08 lb Peach Purree (3.0 SRM) Sugar 23.55 %
1 Pkgs Weihenstephan Weizen (Wyeast Labs #3068) Yeast-Wheat

 

[Swib]

I've never primed with fruit, and I doubt many have. When priming you want some sugar for the remaining yeast to eat up and make CO2 bubbles out of. While fruit sugars will do that, you'll be left with all the fruity bit n pieces in your bottle too. If you want cleaner/less chunky beer use the peaches in secondary and stick with priming sugar for bottling.

 

[rjschroed]

it's puree, I'm not sure it was leave much in the way of chunks in the bottle, but I do know what you mean about it being cleaner. I don't think I'm gonna give it a try but I just thought of it and wondered if anyone had tried it out.

 

[Revvy]

I give info on priming with alternative primers including fruit juice, and other sugars in my bottling stickey- Scroll to the lower half of this post.

Alternative priming sugars, or flavoring your priming solution are great ways to add another level of flavor to your beers.

 

[Beerrific]

I would suggest against it. The puree will leave a lot of chunks and snotty looking stuff behind. You could possibly use a more liquid option like a peach nectar (has a lot of added sugar) and filter it before use. While this will probably not give you all the peach character you want, it would be interesting.

 

[rjschroed]

Thanks for the great info Revvy. I may have to try it out someday. This particular brew is for me and my close friend's consumption, mostly on hot days when something more robust wouldn't go down as easily. That being said I'm not too worried about appearance, most of my friends who would give it a try would either understand or not care. I went with the Speise/gyle method on this batch so maybe next time I'll try it out and report back. I understand that it's in all likelihood going to create "chunky" or not as clean beer but it's a chance I may like to take someday. The Puree I use seems pretty liquid too. It claims to have 11g per 1/2 cup. So for my particular style to carbonate to 2.8 requires 5.8 ounces or 165 grams. . . so 15 servings. . . 7.5 cups. That seems about right.

 

[rjschroed]

Only trouble is the 3lbs of puree is only 5 cups