Maybe I went a little heavy on the apricot

I was planning an Apricot Blonde to enjoy during the summer, but I think I've created something closer to Apricot Wine in reality. I started with a basic (but good) Blonde Ale kit from AHS, mini-mash. Brew day went swimmingly and so did primary fermentation of the ale. Went from 1.054 to 1.010 in about 7 days.

The problems started when I was decideing how much apricot to add to the secondary. I read that anywhere from 3-5 lbs of fresh fruit for 1-2 weeks is appropriate to impart good fruit flavor and aroma. I bought the apricots, chopped them into small bits, pastuerized at 160 degrees for 10 minutes, put them into the secondary and racked the ale over them. I then let them sit for 7 days before tasting a sample.

I tasted a sample at 7 days and It made me cringe. Not only did the air from the carboy smell like Sulphur (the apricots were treated with suklphur dioxide, which I assume was being carried away by the CO2) but the sample smelled like straight up alcohol and was overpoweringly apricotty. I decided to bottle quickly to keep the ale from sitting longer on the apricots.

WHere I think I went wrong is that I added 60 oz of dried apricots instead of regular apricots. This may be the equivalent of twice the amount of regular fruit, and the sugar is much more concentrated in dried apricots. I'll give it a few weeks in the bottle and maybe some age and carbonation will help things.

Has anyone ever used fresh or dried apricots in a brew before? Is my amount WAY off base?

Dried fruit runs 4-5x compared to fresh. The bag I've got says 23% sugars by weight.

Daparish said:

I decided to bottle quickly to keep the ale from sitting longer on the apricots.

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You should have just racked it off, your going to be lucky if the sugar was gone, good chance of bottle bombs.

JeepDiver said:

You should have just racked it off, your going to be lucky if the sugar was gone, good chance of bottle bombs.

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I thought about this and I would've if I could've. I had no other free fermentor, but I did take a grav reading. 1.008. Doesn't seem like there would be alot of sugar left with a reading like that. I'll cross my fingers though.

the flavor may also age out. id let it sit a bit longer than you normally would it it might calm down some.

Got to second the warning about bottle bombs.

It sounds like you bottled up your brew for the wrong reason - flavor - rather than because it was done fermenting. If the apricots still had some unfermented sugars in them, and you added sugars for carbonation, that could be a very dangerous (literally!) situation.

Sorry if that sounds a little over the top, but this is one place where I speak from experience. I made a fruit beer way too many years ago (27 to be exact) and bottled it up in regular bottles (recycled Bud long necks) well before it was ready. I mistook a slowly dropping gravity for being steady - there wasn't enough yeast in my secondary to get a bigger fermentation and I thought it was done. Anyway, bottled with a LOT of sugars left.

2-3 weeks later I had glass grenades in the house that I was literally afraid to pick up and handle because I picked up one, sat it on a table and turned around (thankfully) and it exploded sending glass everywhere. It didn't hurt anyone, but the idea of facing the brew and the glass going boom and knocking an eye or two out was a little more thrill than I wanted in my beer. We ended up throwing two cases of bottles into a dumpster still in the cardboard boxe and called it a lesson learned.

Listen to this edition of The Jamil Show where they talk about that, and how to fruit beers generally.

I'll ride this one out an take precautions with the bottles. Thanks for the warning guys.

ForRealBeer said:

Got to second the warning about bottle bombs.

It sounds like you bottled up your brew for the wrong reason - flavor - rather than because it was done fermenting. If the apricots still had some unfermented sugars in them, and you added sugars for carbonation, that could be a very dangerous (literally!) situation.

Sorry if that sounds a little over the top, but this is one place where I speak from experience. I made a fruit beer way too many years ago (27 to be exact) and bottled it up in regular bottles (recycled Bud long necks) well before it was ready. I mistook a slowly dropping gravity for being steady - there wasn't enough yeast in my secondary to get a bigger fermentation and I thought it was done. Anyway, bottled with a LOT of sugars left.

2-3 weeks later I had glass grenades in the house that I was literally afraid to pick up and handle because I picked up one, sat it on a table and turned around (thankfully) and it exploded sending glass everywhere. It didn't hurt anyone, but the idea of facing the brew and the glass going boom and knocking an eye or two out was a little more thrill than I wanted in my beer. We ended up throwing two cases of bottles into a dumpster still in the cardboard boxe and called it a lesson learned.

Listen to this edition of The Jamil Show where they talk about that, and how to fruit beers generally.

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Did you simply take it off of the fruit in the secondary into a bottling bucket and bottle? If yes, then it seems like I'm going to suffer the same fate.

Just to be on the safe side I would take steps to prevent bottle bombs, but I'm not sure its a given in this situation (or as dire as you guys are making it out to be).

Since apicots were treated with sulfer dioxide that would act as a preservative on the yeast to prevent overcarbonation from residual sugars and thus bottle bombs.

I'm just taking a SWAG here but I'm guessing with as much apricots the OP added, he pretty much killed off any yeast that was left after fermentation with the sulfer dioxide. Or at least its possible....hence the recommendation to be safe in the first place.

To the OP:
1. Be care what you add to your beer. Bottle bombs notwithstanding, you really don't want to be adding things that contain perservatives to your beer. Perservatives by definition are added to foods so that microbes (like yeast) cannot grow in it/on it. Definitely not good for your yeast. If you add things that contain perservatives, you will also prevent bottle carbonating since the yeast will be dead/growth-inhibited.

2. Try apricot extract next time. Its concentrated so a little goes a long way, and preservative free. You can also add it to taste to a small sample then calculate how much to add to your whole bath (ie.g. if 3 drops is good for my 12 ounce sample, then 160 drops is good for my 5 gallon batch). Apricot extract is used in Magic Hat...Jamil did a "Can you brew it?" podcast and goes into greater detail on adding this extract to beer.

Good luck!

broadbill said:

Just to be on the safe side I would take steps to prevent bottle bombs, but I'm not sure its a given in this situation (or as dire as you guys are making it out to be).

Since apicots were treated with sulfer dioxide that would act as a preservative on the yeast to prevent overcarbonation from residual sugars and thus bottle bombs.

I'm just taking a SWAG here but I'm guessing with as much apricots the OP added, he pretty much killed off any yeast that was left after fermentation with the sulfer dioxide. Or at least its possible....hence the recommendation to be safe in the first place.

To the OP:
1. Be care what you add to your beer. Bottle bombs notwithstanding, you really don't want to be adding things that contain perservatives to your beer. Perservatives by definition are added to foods so that microbes (like yeast) cannot grow in it/on it. Definitely not good for your yeast. If you add things that contain perservatives, you will also prevent bottle carbonating since the yeast will be dead/growth-inhibited.

2. Try apricot extract next time. Its concentrated so a little goes a long way, and preservative free. You can also add it to taste to a small sample then calculate how much to add to your whole bath (ie.g. if 3 drops is good for my 12 ounce sample, then 160 drops is good for my 5 gallon batch). Apricot extract is used in Magic Hat...Jamil did a "Can you brew it?" podcast and goes into greater detail on adding this extract to beer.

Good luck!

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Thanks for the input. I was bummed when I realized that my apricots had preservatives on them, cause I wanted to keep it pure and didn't want any preservatives to affect the final flavor. However, it did not kill any yeast in my beer. when I racked onto the apricots, secondary fermentation TOOK OFF. I'm more worried about bottle bombs after reflecting back on this.

Also, I wanted to try to use real fruit instead of extract as some people have reported extract having a soapy or "fake" taste. If i make this brew again, I'm going to try to key in the fresh/dry apricots better.

Daparish said:

Did you simply take it off of the fruit in the secondary into a bottling bucket and bottle? If yes, then it seems like I'm going to suffer the same fate.

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Yep, that's what I did.

Monitor those bottles closely...yours might be fine and have no problems, but it is worth keeping an eye on.

ForRealBeer said:

Yep, that's what I did.

Monitor those bottles closely...yours might be fine and have no problems, but it is worth keeping an eye on.

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They're currently in their cardboard boxes with the top folded down. Those boxes have been wrapped in trash bags. Time will tell.

You can actually find unsulphered apricots in most health food stores.. they're a nasty brown color though, and may impart a darker color to your brew. I think the apricot extract sounds like a good suggestion.

So I have an update for all interested parties regarding my Apricot Ale. I cracked a chilled bottle after two weeks of carbing...It was awful. It had a sulphur/rubber smell that could not be ignored, sort of like burning tires. Also, it tasted overly alcoholic and fusel-ly; I can only assume this was because I put about 4x too much fruit in the secondary. It broke my heart, but I had to de-bottle all but about 6 bottles. It was beyond help, but I'll keep 6 bottles to try at different periods to see how age affects it. You know, for science.

Let this be a lesson for all apricot users in the future.

Daparish said:

So I have an update for all interested parties regarding my Apricot Ale. I cracked a chilled bottle after two weeks of carbing...It was awful. It had a sulphur/rubber smell that could not be ignored, sort of like burning tires. Also, it tasted overly alcoholic and fusel-ly; I can only assume this was because I put about 4x too much fruit in the secondary. It broke my heart, but I had to de-bottle all but about 6 bottles. It was beyond help, but I'll keep 6 bottles to try at different periods to see how age affects it. You know, for science.

Let this be a lesson for all apricot users in the future.

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Does debottle = dump???

broadbill said:

Does debottle = dump???

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Yup, unfortunately. It was undrinkable.

Have you tried any of the one's you bottled since? I'm having a similar problem (strong ... incredible hulk strong burnt tire smell) in secondary with my strawberry blonde (Beermuncher's Centenial Blonde racked on 4lbs of frozen strawberries for a couple of weeks) I'm thinking of just bottling the whole batch and letting them sit for a while- they've been sitting in secondary for 2 months, with no progress whatsoever (and it's still really nasty!) so I'm starting to think there's no hope. would be really keen on an update. Cheers!

just for the record Im shocked that you dumped that so fast.

Alot of beer gets sulfer smells while fermenting that require a long time to naturally settle out, even look at the coopers lager kit, it notes on the can that it creates sulfur smells and must be bottle conditioned for something like 7 weeks before its drinkable, and you dumped after 2 weeks when 3 is the "generally" acceted minimum for bottle conditon?

So very sad.

Doing same thing later this week btw, adding preserved apricots to a wheat beer, but Im preping them in such a way that some of the so2 should be removed.

Still, 2 week dump...painful.

Priemus said:

just for the record Im shocked that you dumped that so fast.

Alot of beer gets sulfer smells while fermenting that require a long time to naturally settle out, even look at the coopers lager kit, it notes on the can that it creates sulfur smells and must be bottle conditioned for something like 7 weeks before its drinkable, and you dumped after 2 weeks when 3 is the "generally" acceted minimum for bottle conditon?

So very sad.

Doing same thing later this week btw, adding preserved apricots to a wheat beer, but Im preping them in such a way that some of the so2 should be removed.

Still, 2 week dump...painful.

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How do prep to remove SO2?

Hey Daparish!

Do you have any bottles of the beer left? Have you tried any recently? I'll bet it would be awesome right about now if you have any left.

I read online that you can steep then rinse the preserved/dry apricots a few times to remove the bulk of the so2.

Im only a day or 2 off doing this myself. All the same Im splitting the batch so if it is a problem only half of it is ruined.

And im with hope2perc, wondering if youve tried anothe bottle recently. Gonna be so upset if its improved