I have been brewing a Thanksgiving/Christmas Winter warmer for the past… 6/7 years about every other year or so. I have been First Wort Berrying the cranberries whole and letting them burst as the boil goes. I don’t care about the clarity, pectin, etc of the beer, etc. Get a nice mellow tartness and not an annoying flavor in the beer but wondering if anyone else has done this and how you have. I usually just buy a bag from the store but wondering if adding juice or pureeing the berries, adding at the end of the boil or anything might be a better alternative.
I know secondary is always an option and taste from there but wondering what others have done and what your perception has been. Maybe I will just keep doing it the way I have been… I think I am 3 or 4 versions in… I had a mishap with the beer this year… brewed with a buddy and oversparged not paying attention, but there is enough time to fix and redo it before Christmas if the sampling isn’t to my liking.
+1 on freezing them but I’ll add that upon thawing them, put the berries in a bucket and mash them up with a potato masher, then add the whole fruit mush to the beer.
Cranberries don’t soften as much as other fruit when you freeze and thaw them, so I usually put them through a couple of freeze/thaw/mash cycles before I add them to secondary. I usually just freeze them in gallon ziploc bags and smush them in the bag by hand. They don’t have to be all mashed up, but they do need to all be at least popped open.
I’ve used dried cranberries in a cyser once- was delicious, although they typically have both extra sugar and oil added to them. The oil might kill head retention in a beer- didn’t matter for a cyser. Maybe there is a way to source un-adulterated dried cranberries or dehydrate them yourself to maximize flavor contribution. Worth it? I’m not sure.
