Cold Crash a Fruited Sour?

Hi all,

I have a 1 year, 2 month old mixed fermentation sour that I added 10 pounds of raspberries to 2 months ago. I'm almost ready to bottle but I had a few questions. Could I cold crash this beer to clear it up a bit? Will the fruit even drop out, or, if I do cold crash, should I rack off the fruit first? My last fruited beer (Brett Saison with raspberries) has a lot of sediment in the bottle and I'm looking to avoid that. I plan on adding Champagne yeast before bottling.

Thanks,
Mike

you could cold crash to make sure the yeast drops out. For fruit though I usually just siphon through a paint strainer. It works great to keep all the spent fruit out.

i put a hop sac over the end of my racking cane. acts like a fine filter on the input.

cold crashing should help too.

I've cold crashed fruit and it will drop out. Regardless if you don't do use a strainer you'll end up with some fruit bits in your bottles.

Thanks, guys. Weird thing is is that I used a paint strainer last time with my fruited saison with Brett and it still has a lot of sediment in the bottle. Maybe something else went wrong.

If you used whole fruit, I've heard of people racking a second batch of beer on to the "spent" fruit and they get just as much flavor/color as the first run. I'd rack it off with the hop bag/racking cane method (above) then cold crash the racked beer.

the mesh on the paint strainer bags that i've seen have been pretty coarse (wide). maybe the ones you have are different, but if i use my paint strainers i can see how a lot of material would get through.

the mesh on my hop bags is much finer. much less gets through.

also, there is a tradeoff between how little sediment you have in bottled, and how much beer you leave behind in the fermenter. if you insist on sucking up every last drop, you're going to get gunk along with the beer. if having nothing at the bottom of your beer is important to you, then be prepared to leave a half or a whole inch of beer above the yeast cake/sediment.

the paint strainer bags I got from home depot are pretty fine. they do a good job keeping out any hops or fruit. If you can't find any fine paint strainers, just go to your lhbs and get a biab bag. It works the same. Neither will keep out all the yeast sediment though.

This is what I rigged up. Small SS braided hose attached with a SS hose clamp. It works fairly well. I leave the end hanging off the racking cane a little to help flow once the fruit starts sticking to it.
View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1432609370.139003.jpg

inflictor-of-grimness said:

the paint strainer bags I got from home depot are pretty fine. they do a good job keeping out any hops or fruit. If you can't find any fine paint strainers, just go to your lhbs and get a biab bag. It works the same. Neither will keep out all the yeast sediment though.

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+1 on the paint strainer bags. I've used hop sacks over the inlet and sometimes it's worked well, but other times it's clogged and lost the siphon. IME it varied depending on how much the fruit had broken down. I've never had issues using a five gallon paint strainer bag lining a corny keg or a bottling bucket, so that's the method I use now. Oh and I usually cold crash as well.