I’m a big fan of passionfruit, but it’s hard to get the flavor of ripe fruit fram anything other than ripe fruit. Those things sell for about 3 bucks apiece in my area, and with all the seeds they have such a low yield of actual fruit pulp to make it impractical/$$$$ to use in beer/mead. I’ve tried juices and concentrates, but they’re just not the same as fresh fruit from a flavor perspective.
I finally found a local supermarket that carries Goya fruit pulp in the freezer section. I haven’t used it yet, but I hear this is the closest you can get to the real thing. Which brings me to my question - has anyone used this (or any other frozen fruit pulp like mango, guava, chirimoya, etc.) as an ingredient for beer or mead? I’m wondering what usage rate to shoot for. Passion fruit is intense stuff, and I have a feeling that my usual 0.5 lb/gallon would be pretty intense for a beer, and maybe just about right for a fruit-forward mead? Any thoughts?
I have a very prolific passionfruit vine that drops a lot of yellow fruit onto my house when in season. Remind me to send you some. Last year I made passionfruit mead as well as witbier and gave several pounds to local micro breweries.
I seem to think of the recipes I’ve seen using passionfruit, it’s usually around 0.5lb/gal, even using the Goya pulps. Avery makes a witbier with passionfruit. They have historically been open about sharing recipes with homebrewers. They may be willing to give some guidance around their usage.
I haven’t used those Goya frozen pulp in beer but I have used them in food and to make cocktails. All of those Goya frozen pulps are as close as I’ve tasted to fresh. I wouldn’t hesitate to use them in a beer.
Just to circle back on this, I brewed a 1-gallon batch of passionfruit mead that used one 14-oz pack of the passionfruit pulp at the end of primary fermentation. I backsweetened it to semi-sweet level with honey after stabilizing. I will say that the passionfruit character and tartness are there, but it’s fairly subtle at this level. It drinks a lot like a German Spatlese white wine. If you handed me a glass and told me it was Gewurz or Riesling I probably wouldn’t bat an eye.
Next time I’l probably going to use either 2 packs for a gallon, or use a pound of another fruit like mango or guava in combination with 1 pack of the passionfruit.