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Yeast and Fermentation / Fruit beer issues

« on: August 07, 2012, 01:40:21 PM »

So I recently tried my hand at brewing a nice summery raspberry wheat beer. The recipe was basically all wheat DME and some belgian aromatic (just for fun) partial mashed and fermented with Wyeast American Ale. My plan was to add 6 lbs of raspberry puree (oregon fruit) in the secondary and leave the beer on fruit for two weeks. I really was hoping to perserve the beautiful golden color of the original beer pre-fruiting... Obviously when I added the fruit the entire volume turned dark red and within a couple days a large sediment layer had formed and most the fruit sugars appeared to be gone based on the yeast activity. I want to clean the beer up and I am concerned about having a smoothie beer rather than a fairly light wheat beer with fruit flavor, so I transfered the beer off of the layer of fruit material and dead yeast to hopefully let it clear up a bit and maybe avoid over fruiting. During this when the beer was open the beer is so murky and smells so strongly of raspberries I am concerned it is ruined. Any thougths on salvaging this? I plan to bottle it anyway and see what comes out, but I think it may be too tart and too fruity and way to murky for what I was hoping. A new layer of sedimented fruit/yeast is forming and I am thinking about transfering it off that again, but a little worried about oxidation and extra chances for contamination... Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.