Pretty Picture of some Feijoas and Feijoa beer

At this time of year (autumn) we are inundated with Feijoas from our not particularly large but highly prolific Feijoa tree. Our neighbours are not that keen on them so we have been experimenting with many different ways we can use Feijoas. One of the latest, and very successful recipes has been a Feijoa Beer. This is not an alcoholic beer, but rather more like Ginger Beer. The process is pretty much the same as ginger beer or the lemonade recipe.

We make this in 9L batches which is enough to fill 6 x 1.5L plastic bottles. We find this lasts us about three weeks which is the maximum time you want to keep this stuff seeing as it doesn’t have any preservatives at all.

Ingredients

  • 2 cups raw sugar.
  • 4L water (3L of cold and 1 Litre boiling).
  • 20 small to medium feijoas.
  • 1 teaspoon of bread yeast.

Process

  • Into a 10L bucket tip the sugar and water.
  • Wash the feijoas.
  • Scoop out the feijoas and drop into the bucket. I found using a teaspoon to chop up the feijoa into a pulp while it was still in the skin then scooping it into the bucket worked quite well for breaking up the fruit. This allows the best contact with the fruit as it brews.
  • Drop peel from two of the feijoas into the mix.
  • Stir in the yeast.
  • Cover the bucket and allow to brew for 8-24 hours depending on how warm conditions are. The longer you leave it the less sugar will be available to provide CO2 to pressurise the drink, but the more flavour extraction from the pulp will happen. My preference is to make sure the pulp is as broken up as possible and to keep it in the bucket for about 8 hours.
  • Strain the fermented mix into a fresh bucket using a strainer bag if you have one. Give it a bit of a squeeze so you get some of the Feijoa “gravy” coming through. The “gravy” helps give the smooth thicker texture that feijoas add to any drink.
  • Clean the 1.5Lplastic bottles and add about 660mL of the strained mix to each bottle.
  • Top up the bottles and cap firmly.

Depending on how warm the weather is the bottles should be firmly pressurised after about 2-3 days. At this point they are ready to drink.

The bottles will typically “ring” when tapped. They are under high pressure so open them gently and carefully otherwise you may end up washing your ceiling with feijoa beer.

This drink is great on its own or mixed with gin in our Nectarine, Peach,and Grapefruit wine.