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brewing with cranberries

Michael

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I am trying to create a cranberry chocolate stout recipe. I have seen a number of recipes using cranberries with the cranberries being added into the mash, boil, primary and secondary fermentation. I was considering adding them to the mash. Any thoughts about pros and cons regarding this. Any thoughts on which point would be best to add the cranberries?
 
Cranberries contain a huge amount of natural pectin.  Heating them above 135 will release that pectin and thicken your wort.  I added fresh cranberries to a small sauce pot with a 1/4 cup of water and held it at 130F until they softened enough that I could mash them and then added them to the secondary for a month.  The beer came out with a nice cranberry taste.  Alternately you could use a cranberry flavor extract just before bottling, but I'd avoid using them in the mash or boil.  Just my thought.
 
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