Little to no activity after adding jam to secondary

Hey everyone,

I brewed a Hefe three weeks ago (the sample I took last night tasted awesome), and I decided that I'd do an experiment and add two 9oz jars of thimbleberry preserves to see if I could infuse any of the fruit flavor into the beer.

I racked the Hefe to secondary, and then dumped in the two freshly opened jars. I realized as I was racking that I should have probably added the preserves beforehand, but it was too late. I made sure to suck up a good amount of yeast (I set the end of the racking cane into the yeast cake).

It's been about 20-22 hours and I figured I would see the yeast going to town on the sugary sludge, but I'm only seeing an airlock bubble every 15 seconds or so. Can anyone say whether this is normal or not? The jelly seems to be caked at the bottom, is it possible they're just not able to get at anything besides the top layer? I am kicking myself for not dumping in the preserves before racking since I'm guessing that would have mixed everything up a bit.

Ted

Lack of airlock activity doesn't mean it isn't doing something. I've never used any type of jam in my fermentation so I can't say how it should react - but in the picture there does appear to be some sort of action going on at the surface of the beer but can't see it very well.

Sorry about the picture quality, but the layer on top is just seeds and some fruit matter that floated up. No apparent krausen.

Update:

It's been 4 days since adding the jam and all is going according to plan. By day two the beer was slowly churning with activity and the airlock was bubbling about every 5 seconds. Seems like it just needed some time to get the yeast back in action.

Here's what it looks like now. Notice the slightly more red color. The debris floating around is the fruit pulp I jostled free from the surface when I took the picture. I hope it tastes as good as I'm thinking it will.

Ted

What will be interesting is if that beer ever clears (although, being a hefe, one can get away with substantial haze).
Might want to dose it with pectinase otherwise...

Cheers!

It turned out pretty damn good. The beer is a hazy blonde/orange, and the thimbleberry jam didn't seem to really have much of an effect on the color.

You get a nice, tart taste right at the front from the thimbleberries and then you taste the typical hefe banana and clove flavors. You can really smell the berries too. A nice light, summer beer.

I've never worried about clarity for my hefes. Isn't it characteristic for them to be hazy?