Made My First Cherry Puree; My GOD!

dwarven_stout · Jul 12, 2011

See, no one told me that I needed to get it hot.. Just freeze, that the cold would kill bacteria AND pop the sugar capillaries, Jerks..

Yeah, I grumble to myself every time I see someone say "Freezing will pasturize" when 1) pasturization requires heat by definition, and 2) the purpose of pasturization is to knock back spoilage bacteria to a manageable level, not eliminate them altogether. When I add fruit to beer, I remove debris, wash it, and spray it down with a campden solution before freezing to break the cell walls and only then add it to beer. This method has worked fine for me so far.

HokieBrewer said:
With the rise of sour beers, there seems to be people who think an accidentally infected beer is going to produce fantastic results.

I don't know that anyone said this beer was going to produce fantastic results. I know I said that if let sit for a while it would probably even be good in the end.

Wild yeast are hit and miss. Some will really trash your beer, but a lot of the ones that come off natural fruits aren't really anything to be scared of. Plenty of people on this forum have snagged their own yeasts from apple orchards, cherries, juniper berries, etc etc. The only way to know FOR SURE what will happen to that accidentally infected beer is to wait it out, and that's what we've advocated for in this thread.

tasq said:
That looks more like mold than a pellicle to me, but I'd need to see a better pic.

It doesn't look like mold to me. I've seen mold on a buddy's experiment that looked like a matted cover, though. I've had a brett pellicle that looked almost like cooked Top Ramen- this picture looks a lot like that + cherries.

scottmd06 · Jul 12, 2011

So what exactly is a brett pellicle? And yes this looks kind of like ramen noodles or wavy brain matter lol Gray in color and with little tiny chunks of cherry from the puree still floating around.

If I were to try it out and it taste ok, will I run the risk of additional carbonation from the infection activity within the bottle and it becoming bottle bombs?

tasq · Jul 12, 2011

The grey is what makes me think mold, but its a fairly small pic.

cashbrewing · Jul 12, 2011

Yes you will end up with bottle bombs if you bottle to early and let the bottles get slightly warm. One thing about wild yeast is they can eat through sugars the brewers yeast have a hard time digesting. They are also very slow in doing their work so that is why time is the best thing if you are willing to wait. It is very possible it could turn out good or not so good. At the NHC this year I had a black saison for the homebrew club CHUGG in San Diego that accidentally went sour and it was amazing, so all I can say is time will tell.

scottmd06 · Jul 13, 2011

So if it IS mold, whats the policy on drinking it? Surely you can't drink mold?!!! I don't understand this whole being able to drink bacteria just fine without getting sick THING...

I scooped out that top layer yesterday and did a fairly clean job of "straining" out larger particles in the beer. Today there was a thin skin layer on top of the beer, so I skimmed it again, but this time filtered about half a glass of the brew through a coffee filter.

There was no bad odor or taste at all, in fact the beer tastes very plain and I wish there was more cherry flavor in it. lol. I will strain it again in a couple days, filter it one last time though a very fine nylon grain bag for the larger cherry particles and then bottle it for good.

Looper · Jul 14, 2011

lol...

you don't listen very well!

just because you strained out the visible infection, doesn't mean it is now absent from your beer. It is definitely still in suspension, and still fermenting sugars that your beer yeast couldn't metabolize.

Keep those bottles in a plastic bag/box! bottlebombsssss!!!!

cashbrewing · Jul 14, 2011

With all the time you have spent and now wasted on this you could have brewed it again. You can't save it. If you don't want to wait to see what it taste like down the road then dump it. I know you are in denial about the wasted time on that batch, we have all had a batch or more go bad, so take it as a brewing lesson.