Added pomegranate to a tertiary

[jlaureanti]

Ok, I have looked for the answer to my question through out the threads but I have found no answers.

This is my first try at a fruit beer. I made a 5 gallon batch and when I went to keg I split off 1 gallon and added 1.5 cups of fresh pomegranate juice (of which i flash blended to separate the seeds from the juice to decrease the amount of tannins and then brought to a boil and cooled with a lid on before racking to tertiary) anyway, I added the juice to the "tertiary" and for the first two days nothing seemed to happen. But now, this is the fifth day and for the past three days there has been major activity. A krausen formed and hasn't gone away. So far the krausen falls back into the beer after 2 days and slows back down. This beer on the other hand has been rock'n for 3 days with no signs of slowing down.

So, my question is... do I just let it rock it until it shows no more signs of fermentation (my initial idea) or should i bottle it soon and just let it carbonate itself (or would this lead to bottle bombs?????)

Anyway, sorry for the noob question but it seems like there is a ton of activity when there shouldnt be.

 

[Pappers_]

The yeast love the fruit sugar - they will eat it all up! Adding fruit always kicks off a big secondary fermentation.

You'll need to let it ferment out. Bottling now would lead to
explosive consequences .

I'm curious about how this turns out - I like pomegranate.

 

[Jeremym19]

i have a wheat beer in secondary that i added 60oz. of POM juice to. I also found little help on the internet for using pomegranate in beer. Judging from my hydro samples it should taste pretty good, the pom added more of a tartness than a sweetness. I'll post back after i bottle and see how the finished product tastes.

To answer your question: let it ferment out in secondary then bottle as normal to avoid any bottle bomb issues

 

[Pappers_]

. . . Judging from my hydro samples it should taste pretty good, the pom added more of a tartness than a sweetness . . .

Exactly, that's true for most fruits, the yeast will eat up the sugars leaving the other flavors, such as tartness. I made a cream stout with cherries about a year ago and the tartness of the cherries was a nice undercurrent in the beer.

 

[jlaureanti]

So heres a recap of what has happened to my pomegranate beer...

The beer spent a total of 2 weeks in the tertiary and tasted horrible when I tried it before bottling... okay, not horrible but it wasnt anything to brag about. It tasted like pomegranate wine and not beer-like at all. The alocohol content seems to have raised dramatically... I only had a little so I havent taken a gravity reading yet.

I cracked a bottle open the other day after 1 week of bottle conditioning and it tastes amazing!!! Awesome pomegranate flavor as well as color.

I was expecting the beer to be tart and not sweet but I guess the high levels of pomegranate juice was enough to keep the tartness down and the sweetness up.

I only bottled three bottles total so i'll try to take a gravity reading before i drink one of them but I want to let them sit for a month and six months before i crack them open to see what aging them does for them