Cherry Infused Vodka Refermentation

[steevolution]

Went to make a drink with my homemade cherry vodka and found a white/pink mass floating in the bottle. My first thought was how the hell did mold grow in vodka? Opened the bottle and greeted by a loud hiss. Now I'm thinking I used so much fruit that the ABV dropped low enough for some Brett to each the cherry juice. Anyone seen this before?

Looked back at my notes and I used 400g cherries, 100g vodka. In retrospect, yeah that's probably too much fruit...

 

[RPh_Guy]

You need to heat pasteurize fruit to kill the wild microbes.

FYI: It's probably not Brett. There are lots of wild yeasts that generally sugar. Brett is pretty uncommon.

 

[steevolution]

Interesting. I've never seen anyone include that step in their infusion / tincture recipes. I assumed the alcohol concentration of the vodka would kill/inhibit anything.

 

[RPh_Guy]

If there's less than around 18% alcohol, fermentation is possible.

 

[bracconiere]

this is the distilling forum...what was the ABV of the alcohol?

according to the USDA, sweet and sour cherries have about 330g's water per 400g's...

so if you used store bought, a tragedy, or homemade would matter...one would only be 12% alcohol, but if 92%, around 28%

 

[steevolution]

Unfortunately it was store bought 80 proof...sorry if this is the wrong forum, I didn't see a better fit and found some other threads on infusions here.

Thanks for doing the research/math. This was a last minute recipe ( experiment? ) I was going out of town for a week and didn't want the cherries to go to waste, so I pitted them, threw them in the biggest jar I had free, topped with vodka, and wrote down the measurements. Didn't think about it too hard in the moment, but looking back I should have known the ABV was going to be too low. I usually top my infusions off with everclear at 25% of the weight of the fruit/herb/whatever, but didn't this time.

Now the question is whether or not to taste it. Actually smells pretty good, yeast added a little bit of spice...

 

[RPh_Guy]

Why wouldn't you taste it?

 

[bracconiere]

Now the question is whether or not to taste it.

should be fine...i'd say smell it first, but you say it smells good.....can always give it swirl and spit test....

 

[bernardsmith]

But wait... so cherries are 80% water. Using alcohol to extract their flavor and color does not mean that 100% (or even 5%) of their water content ends up in the alcohol. I often use vodka to extract flavors from fruit and I don't see any evidence of any significant rise in volume when I strain the liquor to make bitters or liqueurs. I wonder if this floating mass was due to the alcohol acting as a solvent and simply breaking apart some of the fruit.

 

[bucketnative]

But wait... so cherries are 80% water. Using alcohol to extract their flavor and color does not mean that 100% (or even 5%) of their water content ends up in the alcohol.

True, but that's a two-way street, literally. The alcohol will also diffuse into the cherries. Eventually you would hit equilibrium, and the alcohol content would be homogeneous. How long this would take, not sure, but it's probably on the order of days or weeks.

Additionally, the fermentation could be occurring within the cherries themselves, in what may/most likely be a low-alcohol environment during the initial stages of the extraction. Especially given the high ratio of fruit to alcohol.