Pasteurizing sour beer

[chumpsteak]

Anybody ever done this out of concern of bottle bombs or severe over carbing? What if I want to enter a fruit sour in a competition that I know hasn't fully fermented out all the sugar from the fruit addition? I know this is why they make heavier bottles and cork/cages, but wouldn't pasteurizing solve the problem? I keg and occasionally bottle already carbed beer for comps, so just wondering how to do this without fermenting for months to make sure all the bugs have stopped.

 

[doomy86]

I have done it with partially fermented fruit wine, it worked well. Some aromas get destroyed or changed because of the heat, so maybe check with a sample first.

 

[oli-aus]

Mate the over carbing thing is an issue for breweries who have a set level of carbonation in mind but to get bottle bombs you have to be fairly careless.

0.004 gravity points carbs a beer to an average range. 0.5 units of carbonation per gravity point. A champagne bottle can take 7 units of carbonation.

Beer will not get significantly less than 0.000 gravity.

Use a decent saison yeast with your sours and you should get into the 0.004 range quickly, then just bottle when you want.
It's up to you how much sugar you add at bottling, sometimes I don't add any if I know the beer will attenuate further.

 

[oli-aus]

*0.004 is 4 potential remaining gravity points. At the most 5 from what I've seen.

 

[chumpsteak]

Because I force carb and keg I'm more concerned with bottling an already carb'd beer that I know isn't done fermenting. For example I have a raspberry gose I made that I kettle soured, boiled, fermented out, then put on raspberries for 4 days before kegging. I liked the idea of fresh fruit flavor rather than letting it ferment totally dry. Wouldn't this beer be a concern if I bottled it and then shipped it to a contest somewhere? Would likely sit at room temperature for up to a month.

 

[oli-aus]

Mm seems like you would have to pasteurise for that. Maybe look into new belgiums process as they pasteurise.

 

[DeMerchant]

First, go buy the book American Sour Beers - I say that not to be a jerk who responds to people who ask a question with "look it up yourself, but because its a seriously awesome book and most/any 'opinion' I have is because I read that book.

Options that might work for you:
- Campden - use 1 Campden pill per gallon; you'll need to vent this somehow as it will put off sulfur dioxide
- Bulk pasteurize - if you can find a way to get your beer to 150f it would work (maybe possible in a keg with a heat belt?)

 

[SanPancho]

Heat bottles in a kettle of water. Leave one open with thermometer probe in it. As soon as you reach temp (150 or 160, dont recall exactly) you pull them and cool. First in warm water around 80-90 for few minutes, then into fridge. The idea being you want to cool as fast as possible but not shatter glass.

Could also be done in a keg i guess, but you'll need to swirl like crazy when you start to cool. With no glass involved, you could go from heat direct to ice bucket.

The faster it cools the less the impact of flavor.

Lots of info on this in the cider making threads.

 

[Dcpcooks]

What are your gravity readings pre and post raspberry additions? You can't enter cork and caged bottles in BJCP events that I'm aware of as your bottle would stand out.

Raspberries are 4.4% sugar. So You can calculate the maximum amount of sugar extracted. I doubt you got much sugar from the raspberries if you pulled it off after 4 days unless you used a purée (because purée's have water removed so the sugar concentration is higher) If the OG of the beer was higher than the OG of the fruit added then you actually have diluted the beer with the water content of the fruit. 10 lbs of fresh raspberries will contain roughly 7 oz of sugar assuming you extracted all the sugar from the berries. Again I doubt you got all the sugar out in four days. So you basically added a fraction of that.

That said your beer will definitely change flavor profiles while in the bottle after the fruit addition since you didn't let it finish.

How much raspberry did you add to the batch and what batch size was it to begin with? What was your gravity pre and post addition. What kind of fruit did you add?

I do not know an effective method of pasteurization at the homebrew level. You may find some information in the wine section as they often kill yeast during wine production although they do that at the beginning of the process not the end.

You could try bottling a few and aging them very warm to see what you get. You could calculate the sugar addition from the fruit based on weight and gravity readings. My hunch based on the limited data is you added less than the amount of priming sugar you would add to bottle condition a beer. So depending on what level you forced carbonated to you may end up with an overcarbonated beer or a perfectly acceptable level.

 

[chumpsteak]

First, go buy the book American Sour Beers - I say that not to be a jerk who responds to people who ask a question with "look it up yourself, but because its a seriously awesome book and most/any 'opinion' I have is because I read that book.

Options that might work for you:
- Campden - use 1 Campden pill per gallon; you'll need to vent this somehow as it will put off sulfur dioxide
- Bulk pasteurize - if you can find a way to get your beer to 150f it would work (maybe possible in a keg with a heat belt?)

I have that book and have read it. Maybe I need to revisit it, but I was kind of interested in the opinions of multiple people, not just one author. I agree that it is an excellent book full of great info.

 

[chumpsteak]

What are your gravity readings pre and post raspberry additions? You can't enter cork and caged bottles in BJCP events that I'm aware of as your bottle would stand out.

Raspberries are 4.4% sugar. So You can calculate the maximum amount of sugar extracted. I doubt you got much sugar from the raspberries if you pulled it off after 4 days unless you used a purée (because purée's have water removed so the sugar concentration is higher) If the OG of the beer was higher than the OG of the fruit added then you actually have diluted the beer with the water content of the fruit. 10 lbs of fresh raspberries will contain roughly 7 oz of sugar assuming you extracted all the sugar from the berries. Again I doubt you got all the sugar out in four days. So you basically added a fraction of that.

That said your beer will definitely change flavor profiles while in the bottle after the fruit addition since you didn't let it finish.

How much raspberry did you add to the batch and what batch size was it to begin with? What was your gravity pre and post addition. What kind of fruit did you add?

I do not know an effective method of pasteurization at the homebrew level. You may find some information in the wine section as they often kill yeast during wine production although they do that at the beginning of the process not the end.

You could try bottling a few and aging them very warm to see what you get. You could calculate the sugar addition from the fruit based on weight and gravity readings. My hunch based on the limited data is you added less than the amount of priming sugar you would add to bottle condition a beer. So depending on what level you forced carbonated to you may end up with an overcarbonated beer or a perfectly acceptable level.

I used 2 lbs of frozen crushed raspberries in a 5 gallons batch.

 

[Dcpcooks]

I used 2 lbs of frozen crushed raspberries in a 5 gallons batch.

I wouldn't worry about bottle bombs. Next time take a reading with a refractometer then you'll know what your sugar addition is.

May June2015 has a nice write up on adding fruit to beer. You might want to look that up.

 

[chumpsteak]

I thought refractometer post fermentation didn't work right because of alcohol. Also, the raspberries and crushed but not really that much. Mostly whole with some juice, not sure you would see be able to measure all the available sugars.

 

[Dcpcooks]

You can get the sugar content of the fruit with a refractometer. That's what I was referring too.