Made My First Cherry Puree; My GOD!

Took me about three hours to to de-stem, de-pit, and puree four pounds of fresh cherries. I don't know if I'll put that much effort in again, unless this brew turns out phenomenal. I was suggested to freeze the puree and thaw it out when I'm ready to rack onto it. Does that sound about right to you guys?

Yes it does.

Okay!! lol

You can buy Oregon Fruit Puree at homebrew stores.

I made a cherry wheat a few summers ago and I just de-stemmed the cherries and then froze those (to break up the cell walls), let them thaw and added them to the beer.

I did not notice any weird flavors from the pits as I read I might. That beer was one of my best.

I bet all your hard work will pay off.

The freezing and thawing to to rupture the cell walls to release maximum flavors. Hope it turns out great for you.

scottmd06 said:

Took me about three hours to to de-stem, de-pit, and puree four pounds of fresh cherries. I don't know if I'll put that much effort in again, unless this brew turns out phenomenal. I was suggested to freeze the puree and thaw it out when I'm ready to rack onto it. Does that sound about right to you guys?

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I use one of these:
http://www.lehmans.com/store/Kitche...itters___Lehman_s__Best_Cherry_Pitter___17106
It works great! After washing & destemming, I was able to pit 20lbs of cherries in about 1.5 hrs; one of the best investments I ever made.
Regards, GF.

Cherries have been in the grocery ads here in Phoenix for a few weeks and they were down to $1.77lb so I figured I'd get 4lbs to make a puree for my next wheat brew. I'm probably going to start the brew itself this week and then rack it onto the puree and let it hang in secondary awhile. I'm not sure how much malt to use though, knowing that the fruit will increase my ABV% at any given amount the fruit so chooses.. Don't want the alcohol to overpower the cherry.

My wheat brew dropped down around the gravity I've been waiting for so I racked it onto the cherry puree today. Hoping theres not an excessive amount of fermentable sugars in the puree to overpower the brew with alcohol. I made sure my OG on the brew itself was only 1.030 to leave room for the cherries to fill out the rest of the ABV%.

Hmmmm. I was expecting a harder fermentation once I racked onto the cherries but it has been pretty average going. I'm going to wait a full two weeks before even opening this secondary to take a peek and see if I should rack to my bottling bucket.

I made a cherry rauchbier a bit ago. Used Oregon Red Tart, made my own puree, and used frozen whole.

Turned out great. Great cherry flavor. Combines with the smoke to make a truly unique beer.

Not sure there's much point in freezing a puree. I'm going cherry picking this weekend for one of my sours, and I'm figuring on just washing, stemming and freezing before I add them.

We've been racked on the cherry puree for 2 weeks now and there's some nasty lookin' brown and purple bubbles as well as a few white specks floating around on top. Anything you think I should worry about yet?!

Uh-Oh. Thats sounding like mold. Post a picture and maybe even post it in the "Post your Infections" thread in the beginners brewing forum.

I'd rack from underneath the ick into a clean ferm bucket.

scottmd06 said:

We've been racked on the cherry puree for 2 weeks now and there's some nasty lookin' brown and purple bubbles as well as a few white specks floating around on top. Anything you think I should worry about yet?!

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To me, that sounds normal....but I might be imagining the wrong thing.

The white specks could be dried yeast floating on top of cherry puree chunks. My cherry rauchbier kind of looked how you're describing, and it was fine.

However, "purple bubbles" could go either way.

OP, have you tasted it? Can you take a picture of it?

1Mainebrew said:

Uh-Oh. Thats sounding like mold. Post a picture and maybe even post it in the "Post your Infections" thread in the beginners brewing forum.

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It doesn't sound like mold. If anything, it might be the beginnings of lacto, but that's impossible to say without the pic you asked for.

HexKrak said:

I'd rack from underneath the ick into a clean ferm bucket.

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Why would you even advise that without seeing it? If it's nothing, then all you did was advise giving the beer another chance to get aerated and/or contaminated.

Here she is... Looks nasty. This didn't start until after racking onto the cherry puree. I've been very clean and froze the cherry puree before racking onto it, so I'm not sure why this would be happening...

Oh yeah, that's infected. Mmmmmm. Let that puppy ride, see where it ends ups.

Sure looks like you got some wild yeast into there. How's it taste?

Wild yeast from where? The cherries?! I'm afraid to put that anywhere near my mouth!!! LMAO. Are you crazy?

Most likely from the cherries, but it could be from the air.

As far as tasting it, heck yeah I'm serious! I have 3 carboys next to me right now with wilder pellicles than that one. Nothing in there will hurt you (though it might taste funny), and if you leave it alone it will probably make for a good beer in the end (even if it wasn't what you were looking for).

I think I'll just wait it out a bit more before putting that into my body lol Is there anything I can do to strain it a bit, maybe scoop out that "fluff" and then let it sit?

I had a similar looking thing happen to a Bavarian wheat recipe once and after straining out the debris and bottle conditioning for 3 months it was good, with a little better carbonation than expected and the debris had all fallen into the bottom of the bottles and packed with the sediment.

Looks to me like you got a good start to a sour aged on cherries especially considering your low starting gravity of 1.030. Put that bucket in a nice dark cool place in your house for the next year, take a sample once every few months to see how the flavor develops.

Does it matter that I had the low initial gravity so the cherries would ferment and fill out the alcohol content .5-1%? I started with 1lb crushed wheat, 3lbs of the prehopped malt syrup, and then racked onto my homemade puree cherry. Im content letting this recipe rest, not so sure about a year; are 'sour' beers any good?

I doubt you will see a full percent increase in abv or even a half percent, it will increase it but not as much as you are thinking. Fruit has a good amount of sugar but no where near malt extract. As far as if sour beers are good, some hate them and some love them, I was the former and now I can't get enough of them. I currently have 15 gallons that are a year now and need to be kegged and a 60 gallon Port wine barrel that has a 7 month beer sitting in it. The main thing I was saying about the low starting gravity is that alcohol acts as a preservative the lower the alcohol the higher the chance of getting a wild yeast to take hold. Also with adding fruit to a beer I suggest bringing the fruit up to almost a boil at least about 195 and let it stay there for 5 minutes minimum to kill off most of the wild yeast the fruit has on it.

See, no one told me that I needed to get it hot.. Just freeze, that the cold would kill bacteria AND pop the sugar capillaries, Jerks.. I just wanted to make a true cherry wheat with real flavor, not that flavored syrup. Is it too late to increase some alcohol or introduce some magical SUPER YEAST that will clean up some of the nastiness?

Just to clear up some confusion on this thread...

With the rise of sour beers, there seems to be people who think an accidentally infected beer is going to produce fantastic results. That's not the case. A good sour beer takes just as much careful planning and process as a normal beer.

However, now that it's at this point, you have nothing to lose by tasting it or letting it age (if you have carboy space.) Just don't count on it being that good.

What's done is done. I would set it aside and let it age for a year you might just be pleasantly surprised and it might turn out to be the best mistake ever made on that beer. Freezing doesn't completely kill wild yeast heat is the only thing that will pasteurize something. Try your recipe again and oh ya don't use cherry extract it gives a medicinal cough syrup type flavor.

That looks more like mold than a pellicle to me, but I'd need to see a better pic.

See, no one told me that I needed to get it hot.. Just freeze, that the cold would kill bacteria AND pop the sugar capillaries, Jerks..

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Yeah, I grumble to myself every time I see someone say "Freezing will pasturize" when 1) pasturization requires heat by definition, and 2) the purpose of pasturization is to knock back spoilage bacteria to a manageable level, not eliminate them altogether. When I add fruit to beer, I remove debris, wash it, and spray it down with a campden solution before freezing to break the cell walls and only then add it to beer. This method has worked fine for me so far.

HokieBrewer said:

With the rise of sour beers, there seems to be people who think an accidentally infected beer is going to produce fantastic results.

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I don't know that anyone said this beer was going to produce fantastic results. I know I said that if let sit for a while it would probably even be good in the end.

Wild yeast are hit and miss. Some will really trash your beer, but a lot of the ones that come off natural fruits aren't really anything to be scared of. Plenty of people on this forum have snagged their own yeasts from apple orchards, cherries, juniper berries, etc etc. The only way to know FOR SURE what will happen to that accidentally infected beer is to wait it out, and that's what we've advocated for in this thread.

tasq said:

That looks more like mold than a pellicle to me, but I'd need to see a better pic.

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It doesn't look like mold to me. I've seen mold on a buddy's experiment that looked like a matted cover, though. I've had a brett pellicle that looked almost like cooked Top Ramen- this picture looks a lot like that + cherries.

So what exactly is a brett pellicle? And yes this looks kind of like ramen noodles or wavy brain matter lol Gray in color and with little tiny chunks of cherry from the puree still floating around.

If I were to try it out and it taste ok, will I run the risk of additional carbonation from the infection activity within the bottle and it becoming bottle bombs?

The grey is what makes me think mold, but its a fairly small pic.

Yes you will end up with bottle bombs if you bottle to early and let the bottles get slightly warm. One thing about wild yeast is they can eat through sugars the brewers yeast have a hard time digesting. They are also very slow in doing their work so that is why time is the best thing if you are willing to wait. It is very possible it could turn out good or not so good. At the NHC this year I had a black saison for the homebrew club CHUGG in San Diego that accidentally went sour and it was amazing, so all I can say is time will tell.

So if it IS mold, whats the policy on drinking it? Surely you can't drink mold?!!! I don't understand this whole being able to drink bacteria just fine without getting sick THING...

I scooped out that top layer yesterday and did a fairly clean job of "straining" out larger particles in the beer. Today there was a thin skin layer on top of the beer, so I skimmed it again, but this time filtered about half a glass of the brew through a coffee filter.

There was no bad odor or taste at all, in fact the beer tastes very plain and I wish there was more cherry flavor in it. lol. I will strain it again in a couple days, filter it one last time though a very fine nylon grain bag for the larger cherry particles and then bottle it for good.

lol...

you don't listen very well!

just because you strained out the visible infection, doesn't mean it is now absent from your beer. It is definitely still in suspension, and still fermenting sugars that your beer yeast couldn't metabolize.

Keep those bottles in a plastic bag/box! bottlebombsssss!!!!

With all the time you have spent and now wasted on this you could have brewed it again. You can't save it. If you don't want to wait to see what it taste like down the road then dump it. I know you are in denial about the wasted time on that batch, we have all had a batch or more go bad, so take it as a brewing lesson.

Ill wait... lol. Just glad it doesnt smell or taste like sour ass I guess...