Priming with pomegranate juice = beer bombs?

[naf]

Hello,

I've primed the beer with pomegranate juice (freshly squeazed) and now I'm worried whether I've created potential beer bombs. I've measured the SG of the juice and it read 1,060, pretty high no? If all this is fermentable sugar I may have primed the bottles with more than 5 time the needed priming sugar!!
I've bottled 2 days ago and I'm a very worried that the bottles will explode. Should I uncap the bottles? Is there a way I can figure out what is going on inside the bottles?

Many thanks and kind regards,

Nuno

 

[Funkychef]

How much juice did you use?

 

[naf]

700ml in 4L of beer. :O
Aiming for disaster?

 

[tofuguy]

I would test one every couple days at first the every day as it gets close to the carb level you want. Then Chill those babies down to put the yeast in a dormant state.

 

[IslandLizard]

+1^

You added 9 extra gravity points of sugar to your beer so that's pretty sweet right now. But it will ferment out over time. You could ease and reseat the caps every few days to let out pressure, but you never know which bottles are more active and become critical. Be careful!

Since you've only got 12 bottles, let go for a couple days, test, chill way down then drink quickly.

 

[m00ps]

you really have no way of knowing how fermentable that juice was. You could try doing a rough calculation based on the amount of sugar on the nutrition facts, but you still wont know how much the yeast will be able to digest. Its really a complete shot in the dark as to how much it would carb. How did you decide on the 700ml of juice to add for carbing? That sounds VERY high since its close to 20% of your total batch volume

 

[naf]

I had 700ml of Juice and used it all, it was not what you'd call and informed decision. I should have fermented some of that juice, measuring gravity before and after to get an estimate on the fermentability of the sugars.

 

[naf]

I've opened the bottles. They had a lot of gas. Too much. If I had let them capped I'm sure they would have exploded. Some beer spilled out.
Maybe what I did next was a huge mistake but I've put the beer back into a carboy. It is bubbling like crazy. I'm curious as to what will come out of that.
Two things I've learned from this experiment:
- Pomegrenate juice is highly fermentable;
- One should add the fruit in a secondary fermentor;

 

[IslandLizard]

Oh, good you're staying ahead of a disaster.

As long as you prevent splashing or otherwise aerating the beer you can "revert" the bottling process (unbottling?). You will always incorporate some air going back and forth, so drink ASAP once they're carbonated the right way. Oxidized beer gets worse with time.

Let us know what they taste like once secondary is done.

 

[Yeroc]

Any update on this batch? I'm interested in using pomegranate juice to bottled condition a sour Saison that I put on 6.5 lbs of frozen/thawed pomegranate arils about 16 months ago (it's since been racked off the arils). I like the flavor of the beer as it is, but I would like just a touch more of the fruit perception than I currently get.

I'm not sure how to figure out the amount of juice to add without over carbing.

 

[chickypad]

I'm not sure how to figure out the amount of juice to add without over carbing.

When I do this I take a brix on the juice then just assume the sugar is 100% fermentable which would be safest. It seems to work out right, although I only do this in kegs anyway so not risking bombs. If you don't want to calculate yourself you can use a table like this one. Remember you are adding volume with the juice so account for that in your batch size.

 

[Yeroc]

When I do this I take a brix on the juice then just assume the sugar is 100% fermentable which would be safest. It seems to work out right, although I only do this in kegs anyway so not risking bombs. If you don't want to calculate yourself you can use a table like this one. Remember you are adding volume with the juice so account for that in your batch size.

Thanks for the link. Am I doing the math right in my example below - based on the information at that link...

For this example, let's make these assumptions:
* The 3 gallons of sour beer has no residual C02.
* The SG of the pomegranate juice is 1.065 (aka 16 brix), which is 16 ounces of sugar per gallon. Right?
* We'll assume the juice sugars are 100% fermentable for this exercise.

If I want to bottle carb my sour beer to 3.0 volumes of C02 with this pomegranate juice, I would add 1.75 pints (0.1875 of a gallon). 1.75 pints of the juice should have 3.5 ounces sugar.

Does that seem about right?

Note: I would probably not carb to 3.0 volumes, but I wanted to use an amount for this exercise that is somewhat easier to get to. I'd probably go for somewhere between 2.25 and 2.5 volumes C02, because I assume there really is some residual C02 left in the beer.

Any thoughts on these assumptions? Thanks!

 

[chickypad]

* The SG of the pomegranate juice is 1.065 (aka 16 brix), which is 16 ounces of sugar per gallon. Right?

No the 1.065 juice would have 1 lb 6.5 oz sugar per gallon, or about 23 oz of sugar. Looks like you need about .15 gal to give 3.5 oz of sugar.

 

[Yeroc]

No the 1.065 juice would have 1 lb 6.5 oz sugar per gallon, or about 23 oz of sugar. Looks like you need about .15 gal to give 3.5 oz of sugar.

Thanks! Don't know how I messed up going from the reading material to the worksheet, but I appreciate your correction. Next step is to buy some juice and take a real gravity reading, or thaw out some arils from the fall harvest and use backyard juice.

 

[naf]

Any update on this batch? I'm interested in using pomegranate juice to bottled condition a sour Saison that I put on 6.5 lbs of frozen/thawed pomegranate arils about 16 months ago (it's since been racked off the arils). I like the flavor of the beer as it is, but I would like just a touch more of the fruit perception than I currently get.

I'm not sure how to figure out the amount of juice to add without over carbing.

i've tasted the beer and it is fine. as the pomegrenate juice fermented in the secondary there isn't much fruit flavor. however everyone who tried it liked it a lot. i'm really not sure how to do it. if one adds too much juice it must add to secondary and you won't get much fruit flavor. If adding when bottling i guess you need to add much lesser juice and again the flavour wont stand out much. Not at all sure on the best way.