Musings (ramblings) on raspberries and old beer

[Snarf1]

As I've mentioned in a few other threads, which I'm sure both people who pay attention to me remember, but I'll recap for anyone else's benefit, I've got a 2 yr old bug county beer that recently went from nasty fatty acids to smelling strongly and tasting faintly of raspberries along with general funk/lemon thing. It's been in the same carboy the entire time and there isn't nearly enough room to add the 2 gallons of raspberries I'm getting Tuesday. Although I guess 2 lbs/gal is only 220 g/l and I believe Rose de Gambrinus is 400 g/l, so maybe I'll suck it up and buy three gallons if available.

So 5+ gallons beer, 3 gallons of raspberries, not going to fit in even my big carboys and getting the fruit out would suck. Which leaves me with the dreaded bucket. I'm hesitant to put a beer I've done a damn fine job of leaving alone for 2 years and $90 of fruit in a bucket. I can CO2 flush the bucket as much as possible before and after adding fruit and then use CO2 to push the beer over. I guess I can put a second hole in the lid and maybe rig up a way to push beer back out with CO2? Anyone tried that? I'm an acetophobe, how much acetic do I need to worry about in 2 months or so beer will be on fruit? I guess I don't really have another choice. I've got some 1/2 bbls I had planned to ferment in. I guess I could use one of those, but thats alot of headspace.

I've used a handful of other fruits in beer, but not raspberries. Wild blackberries were fine, I just racked the beer onto loose berries and used a paint strainer bag on the autosiphon, but I've heard raspberries are really bad. Will they clog the bag on the siphon or in this case racking cane? I try and push the beer at 2 psi, but I still don't want to pop anything if it clogs. Is it worth putting all of the fruit in a giant bag fruit wine/mead style?

 

[Zapy1]

Have you thought about splitting the batch/fruit into two carboys? I will say that raspberries are very assertive, so 2lbs/gal is on point, and I think anything much past that will overpower the rest of the flavors. I'm a big fan of raspberries, and I think there is nothing that gives beers as great of a color. In the few batches that I've done I've never had any clogging problems, but you do get some pulp that you have to filter out a bit. Leaves behind some very cool looking ghostberries.

I would think that if you get the lid to seal just fine, with the slight positive pressure that you are going to have in the secondary, a bucket would be fine. The O2 permeability is indeed higher, but the short timeframe should play in your favor.

The beer sounds delicious by the way

 

[Snarf1]

Thanks for the feedback Zapy. Now, I'm not so sure where I came up with 400g/l figure. Looking on Cantillon's page, RdG is 200 g/l and LPF is 300g/l. Maybe Hommage is 400, or I got high and made it up. The beer has enough character, I'm not worried about covering it up with fruit. Even if that's the case in the short term, it should just make for better aging.

Bucket questions are no longer pertinent. Turns out my LHBS has the buckets, but hasn't been able to get the lids from the supplier. So I guess I'll bottle a batch or two and use better bottles after all. Need to figure it out because I should be getting home with the fruit about this time tomorrow.

 

[ThreeFishes]

I would not hesitate to put everything into a 1/2 keg. I ferment in kegs almost exclusively, and when I age short batches in them I just purge with CO2 before racking, headspace be damned. I seriously never want to see a bucket or glass carboy again.

 

[Snarf1]

I've picked up the berries, it's about 6 kg so should hit 300g/l. I guess I could pop a keg spear out and try and get the keg clean, but that sounds like more of a project than I have time for. So I guess I'm putting half the berries and half the beer in an empty better bottle and then adding the other half of the berries to the remaining beer in the original bb. If nothing else a chance to see if their is a difference between the CO2 flushed new vessel and adding fruit and O2 to the original one.

 

[Snarf1]

I got half the berries and half the beer in a 6 gallon, so I crammed the rest in there. Ended up with about 2l of beer extra in swing tops to enjoy flat.