learned a lesson on fruit

I went to bottle my chocolate cherry stout, and it was sort of a nightmare. I had put 7.5 pounds of pitted cherries into the secondary (they had been simmered, then frozen and packed away before use). The flavor is awesome, with REAL cherry flavor, not like fake kool-aid or cherry soda flavor, but real cherry fruit next to the chocolate is very nice. It's just that the fruit chunks were continually clogging my siphon, so I ended up having to pour the carboy out through a colander to catch the cherries.

I am hoping I didn't end up oxygenating it, but we'll see. Perhaps the bottle conditioning will absorb it if it's not too bad.

I figure next time I'll either need to puree the fruit and cook it into a syrup, or put a bag into the carboy neck and put them into the bag, or else secondary it in a bucket and keep the fruit in a bag in the bucket.... not sure how well the extraction would go then, though.

In 3 weeks I'll sample the beer.

We'll, that's a tough one because pouring thru a colander is a great way to oxygenate the liquid. I do it with my wort every time I brew. Most likely you oxygenated the crap out of it.

Will it taste funky? Time will tell.

Drink it fast

I got about 2/3 or 3/4 of the beer into the bottling bucket via siphon, then the last quarter was poured.

I'll maybe start checking it at 2 weeks instead of the normal 3.

Next time just put a hop bag or something similar over the end of your siphon.

You may have screwed the pooch on that one...You may be just fine and dandy! 50 - 50 Chance.
Racking off of fruit sucks! Guaranteed.

I hope for the best on your beer.

It's worth a few bucks to get a very large mesh bag. The one I have is about the same size as the fermenting pail, so no worries about extraction.

OUCH! thats gonna leave a mark.

I just racked off a pound of cherries on a small batch not too long ago...half'd 'em then quartered the half w/ the pit to get the pits. The beer sat on the cherries for 2 weeks or so before racking....great cherry flavor and the pieces were big enough that they didn't clog my autosiphon.

Going through a strainer at that stage? good luck.

Take a look at the technique in Steve M's Raspberry Ale. I am planning on that here in a few weeks.

where's the steve m's raspberry?

Its in the recipe section under fruit beers.


https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f75/raspberry-ale-55316/

well, I chilled one bottle on Saturday and tried it with some friends over for my seasonal beer party. It was excellent. I think it is just a hair shy of being done, maybe one more week (it's at 2 weeks in the bottle now). No signs of oxidation, but I think I'm going to keep testing one every few days till it's done to my satisfaction, then drop the cases into the chest freezer at 32 degrees to store while waiting to drink them and try to get them drank quickly.

Glad that they taste fine. It sounds delicious!

Sounds like a plan