Kriek - how long on fruit?

A friend of mine just visited Belgium; he says they make Kriek that way: they take fresh cherries, they pulp them a little bit (no sanitation or pateurisation whatsoever), and they rack young (1 year old) lambic on it. After ~2 weeks they filter out the cherries and Kriek is ready.

The timing is somewhat different from what I heard (3 - 6 months on fruit), what is your experience in that subject?

I depends. A lambic after 1 year is probably ready to go and you only need enough time on the fruit to add flavor. With the lambic I have fermenting, I allowed it to ferment for a month, then I added fruit. I'll have the fruit in the secondary for 4 months before I rack off it and let it condition for another 7-8 months.

Do you know which brewery your friend talked to? The brewer from Cantillon said they leave beer on the fruit 2-3 months. It depends what sort of character you are looking for, and how much time you have. I’d be worried about bottling a sour fruit beer too early, two weeks might not be enough time for all the sugars to ferment out depending on how strong the microbes are.

I just bottled a Flanders Red that had been sitting on 2 lbs of sour cherries since November. I drank a full glass of it uncarbonated at warm cellar temp, can’t wait for it to carbonate.

Oldsock said:

Do you know which brewery your friend talked to? The brewer from Cantillon said they leave beer on the fruit 2-3 months.

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He was in Cantillon too He must have talked to other brewer

I am asking about it, because my first Kriek was ruined by acetobacter.

I made a 6 gallon batch of lambic, 5 gallons are still fermenting in glass carboy (11 months) and they are OK so far.
One gallon I racked on 2 lb of cherries shortly after I pitched the bugs, and I let it sit for 10 months, and this one caught infection and now it tastes vinegary.

Now I'm going to rack the rest of my lambic on fresh cherries, and I want to make any necessary steps to prevent such infection. If you have any suggestions I will be happy to hear it. I'm thinking of lowering the temperature of the fermentation to ~64F to slow down the acetic microbes, and I want to keep the beer on fruit as short as possible.

We had a discussion about oxygen exposure and acetobacter in a different thread. I highly doubt the fruit itself is the problem but more the aeration that occurs when racking onto it. You might benefit from flooding the secondary with CO2 and using a vessel that reduces the headspace to near nothing (and use glass).

Bobby_M said:

We had a discussion about oxygen exposure and acetobacter in a different thread. I highly doubt the fruit itself is the problem but more the aeration that occurs when racking onto it. You might benefit from flooding the secondary with CO2 and using a vessel that reduces the headspace to near nothing (and use glass).

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Could you give me a link to that thread?

My infection was very rapid. At bottling the beer was quite OK, after a week it had some trace of vinegar, after 2 weeks I couldn't drink it. I suspect, there was plenty of acetobacter sitting in the carboy, but it couldn't act due to lack of oxygen. At bottling time it caught some oxygen and got to work...

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f127/my-red-isnt-sour-185397/

Does your bottling technique restrict aeration? No splashing into the bottling bucket or even flush it with CO2 first. Then make sure you use a bottling wand to deliver the beer directly to the bottom of the bottles.

Bobby_M said:

Does your bottling technique restrict aeration? No splashing into the bottling bucket or even flush it with CO2 first. Then make sure you use a bottling wand to deliver the beer directly to the bottom of the bottles.

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Sure, I don't even use bottling bucket, I bottle stright from the fermentor; but you know, some degree of oxygenation at bottling is inevitable.

I might have used too weak yeast for carbonation purposes, I added normal ale yeast starter (irish ale), as I see on the forum, they use dry champagne yeast for carbonating lambics, maybe the'd use up the oxygen faster.

I made a kriek a few years ago with whole fruit (with pits), slightly macerated. It was racked onto the fruit after about a month and I let it sit on the fruit for over a year. I read that it would extract flavors from the pits in addition to the fruit. It turned out great.