Adding fruit to secondary, how to sanitize the fruit?

By my count, we have two batches of strawberry, one raspberry and one blueberry all at more or less the same stage. This should be interesting reading for a while.

yup and steve I am not that far from ya if you like strawberry and wanna trade a couple brews one day.
not sure where anybody else is.

i've got plans to start a strawberry pale ale about 2 weeks from now, so I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this thread and, hopefully, learning something from you guys....
i'm also not too far from williamstown, nj and "philadelphia area".....

6 lbs. of smashed cherries put in secondary fermenter, siphoned a plain wheat beer on top of that... day 2 had all the cherry skins clogging up the blowout tube.

I'd definitely recommend racking to another 6.5 instead of a 5 gallon carboy if anyone else tries the same style and doesn't want to simply add the fruit to the primary.

bazeballdadx said:

6 lbs. of smashed cherries put in secondary fermenter, siphoned a plain wheat beer on top of that... day 2 had all the cherry skins clogging up the blowout tube.

I'd definitely recommend racking to another 6.5 instead of a 5 gallon carboy if anyone else tries the same style and doesn't want to simply add the fruit to the primary.

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I'm doing strawberry. I thought I made a plenty small batch of pale stuff for the base beer, but it blew the cork in 3 hours after adding fruit. That was having pureed with a potato masher, small peelings. I guess I'd run a harder skinned fruit like cherries or plums through a blender. Anyway, after a week in the secondary, I racked to a 5 gal tertiary, and filled it right to the top. Perhaps the carboy I used is 7 gals? It's from the swap meet, has no markings on it.

Maybe next fruit beer I'll split the primary into two carboys for the first few days? Then I might as well try an eight gallon batch, for the same labor.

The way everybodies seems to have a rousing secondary I think yeast like fruit. perhaps there is a 'yest food' yet to be found? Ph? antioxidents ?polyphenols? minerals? fertiliser? Or is it just plenty of yeast left from the primary?

So we can add in a cherry brew as well.

Lou, I am in Broomall - so we are no more than ten or fifteen minutes apart. I will be happy to swap out a few. Williamstown is not quite as close but an opportunity could arise.

My fruit is getting added tonight. I was hoping to do it last night, but I had school, and then had to get some work done after that...I have settled on 2.5# for my rasberries.

Updated count: Two raspberry, two strawberry, one cherry and one blueberry.

is anybody using pectic enzyme in their fruity brews? i'm particularly interested in hearing about the fruity pale ales, not so much the wheat beers, as cloudiness is desirable in a wheat ale....

I am not using pectic enzyme, but I did not boil my fruit and read that the enzymes only react/release when boiled. I was looking closely last night and it is still bubbling at about 1 bubble every 10-15 seconds and is very cloudy.
I really hope it clears up!

My fruit did not make it in last night .....too many work and non-brew related things that needed to get done. Hopefully tonight. Also, I am thinking now of using black rasberries instead of red...

i'm also not planning on boiling my fruit, so i was thinking of not using the pectic enzyme...supposedly strawberries are very low in pectins, so maybe it won't be an issue. let me know how it turns out

My blueberries, as noted above, were inadvertently allowed to boil. I guess I will have some clouding, but I don't object strenuously to that anyway. On the other hand, if there is a way to fix this during secondary (or tertiary) fermenting, I am interested.

I thawed my 6# of frozen strawberries in a pot with a quart of water, mashing them as they thawed. Once they were steaming, and a few bubbles, I turned them off and let them cool. I figured I didn't want to cook them, just thaw and pasturize them. Aand, I think frozen/processed foods are sanitizes in chorline anyhow- this from a friend in that business.

I racked to tertiary on Sunday, but it's still cloudy. With my usual beers I can start to see a clear layer at top after a day er so. No stratification yet, no sediment in bottom. Strawberies aren't supposed to have much pectin in them, and chill haze isn't my problem- yet...

Just finished adding my rasberries, but I goofed and let them get to a boil, so I am assuming that I will have some cloudiness, which is too bad because the ale I added them to was the clearest I have brewed yet. On the plus side, I think that the color change gave it a nice hue, and it smells great. I had to remove some beer for the berries to fit into the carboy, so I put that in the fridge so that I can sample it cold. I can't wait for this stuff to be done.

So far so good, though I do not think that I added enough. I want a light berry flavor, so I was afraid of adding too much, and in the end, I chickened out and only added 2# of red rasberries. I think next time will need more, but I am pleased with the product. I was shooting for a light bodied/crisp ale with taste of berry, and that's what I got! For kicks, I took a gravity measurement of the beer after adding the fruit, however, and there was no change, and I did not get a spike of fermentation...was this due to the low amount of fruit that I added? not too concerned as long as it tastes good since the primary fermentation was right on the mark.

Next time I will have a gallon jug sanitized and ready to take the overflow so that I can add it back to the beer at bottling. I just forgot about the displaced volume due to the berries, and ended up wasting/drinking it.

how long does everybody plan on keeping their fruit in the secondary for? It will be a week tomorrow for me and I am thinking I should take them out soon and rack the beer to tertiary to clear and then bottle so I can get this done sometime soon.

i know I know patience but it looks so good.

That's what I did and I think it was a good idea. I lost maybe a half gallon because of the loose trub on the bottom and the fruit floating on top* but I think it will make a better beer in the end. There was an awful lot of gunk in there. I think that getting all that out now, and bottling in a week or two, I will be a good move to help make it clearer. Bottling around all that goo would have been a frustrating experience.

I used Irish Moss in the original brew (which I have not used before) and made it pretty pale, and the results to this point were startling. The color (mine is the blueberry) in the siphon tube was sort of a slightly reddish salmon pink and very clear. The smell was amazing. I can't wait to have one.

Oh, and I added maybe a half cup of dextrose just to give the yeast something to do this week, and to add a bit more alcohol content.

*I used some rice solids in my basic brew to keep the flavor light and I always get this kind of loose, poorly compacted trub when I use them. Plus, I think using lighter, less acidic hops will also contribute to this.

I am going to leave it on the berries for another week, then rack to a tertiary for a few days prior to bottling.

most of the berries on top have turned pink and the beer is still pretty cloudy with a good inch+ of junk on the bottom and not a bubble out of the airlock for the last couple days.
Tonight I am going to rack to tertairy, to get the berries out, after a week, and hope to clear up and bottle on the weekend. It will be 3 weeks this saturday since the wort was made and put in the primary where it sat for 9 days, then in secondary now for 7 days. Tertiary for 5-6 days then the bottles until April, then finally drink! just in time for spring!

I checked out my carboys this morning, and noticed that there was a lot of berry debris floating in my rasberry ale. I then took a closer look and noticed that fermentation definitely picked up a little, as I had bubbles coming up through the beer. No heavy airlock activity, but definitely a more active brew. This is interesting because primary fermentation had already gotten down to 1.008 from 1.053, and the gravity did not change when I added the fruit. Has anyone noticed this? Is it possible that the sugar was still trapped in the berry material, and this is the reason that it did not go up immediately? I am not worried at all, but I would like to understand the process a little better given what I am witnessing.

my readings dropped a few points while in the secondary. It was a very active secondary that clogged the airlock in the first 12 hours with plenty of activity for the first 3-4 days.

there is now about 4 gallons of strawberry beer sitting in its third carboy to clear and hopefully bottle this weekend. It had a very strong smell to it and a kind of orange color. It had a perfect strawberry taste, not too overpowering, for me. The left over strawberry peels stunk like they were soaking in vodka! Very strong smell to them.

Nice-I had a heavy and quick primary fermentation that got my beer down pretty low (1.008), so I think the lag was due to the time it took for the sugars to dissolve into the beer. Once the sugars were introduced, it seemed to start up again. That took 24-48hrs for me. Not sure exactly since I hadn't peeked at it since early Sunday morning. I will be taking a gravity measurement within the next couple days to see what has changed. Hopefully that will give me an idea as to what transpired. Whatever it was, it should be tasty. With the additional fermentation going on, it seems that the beer is taking on a stronger berry aroma, which I am hoping turns into taste as well.

So...when will everyone be bottling?

im hoping to bottle this weekend if everything clears up.

I am thinking in about 1 1/2 weeks. Give it the rest of this week with the berries, rack off to another carboy to clear for a bit, then bottle.

My strawberry ale has been in tertiary for 11 days now. Still as cloudy as when racked from secondary. I did use a 25% sour mash, but it was pretty clear in the primary. I guess I'll bottle it this weekend, even if it looks like wheat beer...

Strawberries are not supposed to have much pectin, so that isn't the problem. Perhaps they have whatever makes wheat cloudy... protein? but protein is heavy, and should settle...unfermentibel carbs?

I used Nottingham, it is supposed to leave more carbs for a maltier taste. I thought some residual sweetness would compliment the fruitiness... Perhaps there is a reason that blue/black/rasp berries are more common the strawberries in beer?

what temp is your tertiary at? I am thinking of going cold with mine to help in getting the cloudies to fall out, then bring it back up to room temp when I bottle.

Truble said:

what temp is your tertiary at? I am thinking of going cold with mine to help in getting the cloudies to fall out, then bring it back up to room temp when I bottle.

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It's sitting on my bedroom floor, probably about 62-64. I thought the floor would be cooler, and cause less convection. Since I've been using a secondary my beers have been clearing well, very light sediment in bottles. It's got the be the strawberries...I go now to Google for what makes wheat beers cloudy.

Yeah. My rasberry, which is my first berry beer, went from crystal clear at first to cloudy with the berries. I am going to cellar it prior to bottling for a bit.

Just found this regarding pectin, enzymes, and the uses thereof.

BYO's Mr Wizard

might have to look into this.

My reading shows that it's the protein in wheat that makes the beer cloudy. I can't find anything on Google about protein in berries. I guess I'll compare labels in the frozen fod section at the grocery store. The Knott's Berry farms straw- and rasp-berry jams in my fridge both list 0 grams protein. I think that means less than one gram in a tablespoon. No help there...

Yup, I've seen the BYO artical on starch haze, that's why I think strawberries have protein haze.

Here's a site with lots of info on Lambic's:

http://www2.parc.com/emdl/members/apte/flemishredale.shtml

With some info on fruit adjuncts. Seems some berries have lots of citric acid, I wonder if it breaks the fructose-glucose bond in sucrose, allowing the rapid fermentations we see?

Would the starch show up in an iodine test? Anybody here got the stuff to try it?

I have 1 gallon of the beer, before I added strawberries, in another secondary and it is extremely clear. The 4 gallons, with strawberry added, definately is more cloudy. Last night there was already another layer of sediment on the bottom of the tertiary so stuff is definately falling out of it still.

It will be interesting to see how much it clears and have something to compare tastes, color, etc against.

I'm still getting a little settling out of stuff, and of course adding a half cup of corn sugar in the tertiary over the weekend means a little more fermenting action this week. But things have slowed, it is very clear and I think I will bottle up this weekend.

SteveM said:

adding a half cup of corn sugar in the tertiary over the weekend

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why'd you do this?

Maybe this is unique to the beer I'm brewing, but it seems like it's fairly dark and red after adding the cherries. I can't imagine even noticing cloudiness. Hopefully this will change within the next few months.

I still have another week and a half in the secondary (according to the recipe), and then two weeks to clarify before bottling.

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e201/bazeballdadx/5c92b75c.jpg

Lou said:

why'd you do this?

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No compelling reason - basically because I had a little extra in a little bag and I figured it would give a slight boost to the alcohol content. Call it a whim.

SteveM said:

No compelling reason - basically because I had a little extra in a little bag and I figured it would give a slight boost to the alcohol content. Call it a whim.

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ok, that's kinda what i figured, but then i got to thinking that there might've been a real reason that i never heard of...

its time to bump this thread up again :-D

I am thinking of moving my tertiary to the basement. I was reading on the beginner board that colder temps are good for clarification and this beer is definately having some trouble with that. It is still pretty cloudy and might end up staying that way, although its fruitless counterpart is crystal clear and being bottled tonight.
I am now in no rush to get the strawberry beer into the bottles because I have to go away for 3 weeks starting april 1st and it would be pushing it to get it ready to drink before that. So as long as it is bottled by the end of march it will be waiting for me to drink when i get back.
So off to the basement it goes, for some cold outta sight outta mind clarification time.