I’ve used blueberry puree in a wheat beer and it worked well. When adding fruit to the fermenter I recommend using a mesh bag or a filter when using fruit puree to remove fruit skins to reduce gunk in the bottom of the fermenter. James from Basic Brewing (basicbrewing.com) has added fruit directly to kegged beer. I make mead and have used Amoretti Natural Blueberry and Raspberry Artisan Flavors along with frozen fruit with good results. They have several types of fruit flavoring and I had good results with their products. Some homebrew shops have their products or you can check it out at (amoretti.com).
When you say “a good flavoring could remove all of that worry” are you meaning a good extract? From all of these responses it sounds like extract is the way I want to go with this first one. Maybe I’ll graduate to puree and whole fruit eventually. I’m still a newbie.
Yes, I’m saying that an “extract” or “flavoring” as opposed to actual fruit would wipe out every one of those caveats that have been mentioned. You wouldn’t have to worry about using A LOT of fruit, volume issues, overly-dry beer, secondary fermentations, contamination, etc. I have checked out those Amoretti products mentioned by Purduekenn and they look very good. It does say that they are “naturally sweetened” so that would concern me a little bit. Other things: What happens if you add a sweet fruit flavor to beer and that flavor remains in the beer creating a “sweet beer”? That needs to be considered. Raspberry, strawberry, blueberry and even lemon or orange in a beer should come across as tangy and flavorful but not overly sweet and IMO there should be a hint of it without it coming across too strong. All of these things need to be put into the plan prior to brewing so you know how the beer will come out. At some point I was going to make a lemon wheat beer and I considered all the ways to introduce the lemon flavor. In the end I brewed the beer “plain” and if I wanted it that way, I tapped a glass and drank it. If I wanted lemon, I squeezed a lemon wedge into the beer and rubbed it around the rim and got great, fresh lemon flavor and the beer could be enjoyed both ways.
To clarify my post I’ve only used Amoretti Artisan Flavoring in mead after fermentation was complete in a mead that had frozen fruit. For example a Raspberry Mead that needed a deeper red color in my opinion. The Amoretti flavoring worked well with the natural fruit in the mead. In my opinion it may be wise to try a smaller batch with flavorings before making a larger brew with fruit flavorings.
When you added the Amoretti, was there yeast present that would have started another fermentation or was that not a concern? I’m not a meadmaker so I’m not sure how that would look.
I have used Amoretti in beer and don’t recall any additional fermentation. As far as I can find there is no sugar added…could be wrong, though. Artisan Natural Flavors — Amoretti
Yes there is yeast left so I add potassium sorbate before adding Amoretti Artisan Flavoring. I have never had fermentation start again and I monitor the mead to make sure that it is done fermenting before bottling. I have never had issues with fermentation in any of my bottles using Amoretti Artisan Flavoring
So I was just browsing on Amazon and I found THIS and also THIS. Basically sugar-free fruit-flavored syrups. I have always been curious if these would work. For me I would just add some to the keg prior to transferring the beer on top. As I look around on Amazon I see a ton of flavors. The question is whether the fruit flavor will come across as sweet because my guess is that it’s sweetened with something that is not sugar (Stevia, Nutrasweet, etc) and I would want to steer away from making the beer too sweet. The balance would have to be just so.
I’ve used many flavors from Apex for soda making and they are very good. I haven’t used any in a beer or mead yet, but I wouldn’t hesitate to use them if I were brewing a flavored beer.