I sunk my pellicle...

Yesterday, I checked my first sour (Duvel cultured yeast, Roeslaire, plus dregs from Rodenbach, "Green Monster", Saison Rue) that's been going for 10 months yesterday. It's amazing - I'm really pleased.

That said, the reason I checked it was because I have a 32oz bottle of tart cherry juice that is too tart for me, so I added that plus a can of sweet cherry puree. Well, some of the puree ran down the inside of the carboy, so without thinking I swirled it all up, and 'sunk' the pellicle. Does this matter? Should I try to avoid that in the future?

(Also, as a 2-for-1, should I wait for a pellicle to disappear before checking on a sour, or what?)

Thanks!

I have been told by numerous sour brewers/pros that it's fine to dump fruit onto the pellicle. It will reform and only really drops with vibrations. I bottle by racking under the pellicle too with no issues.

Thanks, I appreciate the response

crawfman said:

I have been told by numerous sour brewers/pros that it's fine to dump fruit onto the pellicle. It will reform and only really drops with vibrations. I bottle by racking under the pellicle too with no issues.

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I'm a bit curious about this advice. Seems most folks usually advocate carefully racking sour/funky/aged beers onto fruit, rather than adding fruit into the aging vessel for oxidation reasons.

On the other hand- don't most funky beers need some oxygen to develop correctly- that's why barrels are so popular for them?

dcHokie said:

I'm a bit curious about this advice. Seems most folks usually advocate carefully racking sour/funky/aged beers onto fruit, rather than adding fruit into the aging vessel for oxidation reasons.

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Unless you liquidize the fruit and boil it, I suspect the fruit contains a lot of O2. Not sure either way makes much difference.

dcHokie said:

I'm a bit curious about this advice. Seems most folks usually advocate carefully racking sour/funky/aged beers onto fruit, rather than adding fruit into the aging vessel for oxidation reasons.

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I'm pretty sure that's what most people do, but there are always different ways that work for other folks. Maybe with brett beers it's less of a worry since brett is an anti-oxidative reactant or whatever the tech term is.

banik said:

On the other hand- don't most funky beers need some oxygen to develop correctly- that's why barrels are so popular for them?

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Some sure, but I woudn't want to get a bunch of air in a beer with acetobacter in it for instance.

TNGabe said:

Some sure, but I woudn't want to get a bunch of air in a beer with acetobacter in it for instance.

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This was more along the lines of my comment since the OP has a sour going. I get nervous having to rack very old sours, but also not sure I want to go plopping a bunch of cherries through the neck of a carboy into an aged beer either...