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Estimating fermentables in fruit

aiptasia

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Hi guys. I'm interested in brewing a fruit beer this fall from a recipe which calls for adding the fruit component after the boil during a steeping period. I was wondering, when using fresh fruits, is there any sort of a way to estimate the fermentable sugars in the fruit?

Just curious if anyone has come across any good way of doing that.
 
This is one of those situations that can make you lose sleep.  I have seen charts that give approximate levels of sugar for different types of fruit, but these will be wildly inaccurate in practice. What kind of fruit are you using?  My suggestion would be to juice a small amount of the fruit.    If you are using apples, or pretty much any kind of berry, this is easy.  Once you get cup or so of juice, you can get a hydrometer reading.  You can then get points per gallon from that and go from there.  For really hard fruits, I'd suggest putting a cup or so in a food processor, beating it down to baby food, then using a kitchen towel to squeeze the juice from the pulp. You want as few starchy solids as you can get in your hydrometer tube.   
 
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