I plan on making a peach wheat in the spring. I picked, pitted and skinned 4 1/2 pounds of sweet peaches in the fall and vacuum sealed and froze them. I plan on racking 5 gallons on them in the secondary. Is that enough? Too much? Or should I add some puree? I really don’t want to add any extract. Thanks.
I’d say not enough. Peach is a very mild fruit in flavor and very low in acidity so once you ferment out the sugars there isn’t a lot left to give it a distinct flavor in the beer. It’s my experience that it turns in to sort of a mute, generic fruit flavor. I’ve had other peach homebrew and generally found that to be the case although some people really seem to nail it. Not sure if there was some peach extract in play to get a good flavor. I dunno, I’d probably blend peach and apricot because apricot will add some acidity myself. Regardless of what you choose to do I think 4.5 pounds is too little.
+1 to the above.
I would recommend using apricot, or doing that amount of peaches in 2 gallons.
The only peach beers I have had that I really tasted the peaches were sours.
Ok, so if I blend apricot with 4 1/2 pounds of peaches, how much apricot should I use?