My neighbors have a persimmon tree in their field that seems to produce quite a bit of fruit each year, to the point where they'll make more than enough persimmon pudding to share, and still have fruit left over. Last year, I thought it might be an interesting idea to try adding some of the fruit to a beer. I went back and forth with a couple of different ideas; trying an old style recipe, as well as adding the fruit to secondary for a beer I've made before. I decided to try adding to something I've done before and landed on my Hobgoblin Ale clone, in particular, the one that I brewed with the Nottingham yeast, as this one seemed to produce the best beer of the three that I tried. The idea is to have a dry yeast that allows the flavor of the malt to come through, and then add the fruit to secondary. I collected about a cup of fruit mash from my neighbor, and froze it to kill bacteria. When the time comes to rack the beer to secondary fermentation, I'll bring the frozen fruit mash to room temperature in a water bath, and then rack it into a sanitized fermenter. Once that's done, I'll rack the beer on to the fruit and let it sit for several days.
I found a number of persimmon beer recipes and thoughts on using the fruit, including here, here, and here. One old style recipe I found a while back included mashing the fruit, and then gently baking it after mixing it with wheat bran. The resulting "bread" was then added to boiling water...definitely old school.
Brew Day: 3 Nov 2020
Partial Mash:
8 oz caramunich III
2 oz flaked wheat
Boil (20 min):
1 lb Golden Light DME
4 oz table sugar
Hops: 14 g Fuggle (@ 20 min)
Yeast: Nottingham
I followed all of my normal procedures through pitching the yeast.
Addendum, 16 Nov: Racked the beer into secondary, on about 2/3 c of persimmon fruit mash. My neighbor had picked and mashed the fruit, and I stuck the mash in the freezer prior to brewing the beer. Tonight, I put the container in a warm water bath, and using a sanitized spoon, scooped the mash into a sanitizer fermenter. I then racked the beer onto the mash, and then gently agitated the beer. I didn't want to add a bunch of oxygen to the beer, but I just wanted to mix it a little. We'll see how this turns out in a couple of days.
Addendum, 19 Nov: Bottled beer tonight, using 1/2 c of boiling water (bottled, not tap) to dissolve a bit more than an ounce of corn syrup. I'm going to see if this has an impact on the carbonation issue I've been experiencing. Got 7 good bottles and 2 small, repurposed soda bottles.
