Ok I bought an all grain blonde ale and I want to make it a blackberry jalapeño ale.I have a 3lbs 1 ounce can of blackberry purée when and how should I add the purée and jalapeños.I assume in the secondary but would I just dump it in or put it in a grain bag? Help
Using a bag or not depends on if you are going to monitor the heat level of the beer, and then what you will do when it reaches a certain level.
When the heat level is where you want it, are you going to immediately bottle the beer? If not, you will need to remove the jalapenos to prevent further extraction…which means you need to bag them (or rack the beer off of them, but bagging is simpler).
With the puree, just dump it in but try to minimize splashing/aeration. When I add purees, I attach long tubing to a funnel. The end of the tubing goes beneath the surface of the beer. That way, when I dump in the puree, it doesn’t splash all around.
I normally add in the secondary.
I found the “Ciphering Fruit Beers” article in the May/June 2021 BYO most interesting and helpful. The article recommends adding the puree at high krausen.
The author of the article posted helpful spreadsheets, etc at sonsofalchemy.org/library in the Brewing Software section.
Add them separately, the purée once primary is well under way cuz you don’t want the yeast to crap out and leave the beer too sweet. Also you won’t be able to gauge the jalapeños’ flavor and heat contributions until the beer is fully fermented, so they should be added in secondary, using bags.
I would add the puree towards the end of primary so you have active yeast but not so aggressive of fermentation that you’ll blow out the aromatics from the fruit. After fermentation completely ends I would add the jalapenos so you’ll know how much flavor and heat you’ll add and get a sense of what the final beer will taste like. If you intend to package the beer as soon as it’s ready you can dump the jalapenos in and then rack out when ready. I usually just halve peppers and remove the core and seeds. They won’t clog your racking gear that way. If you intend to age the beer I’d bag the peppers so you can easily pull them.