General Category > Yeast and Fermentation

Fruit beer issues

(1/3) > >>

blgreene:
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.

erockrph:
Was this a 5 gallon batch? If so, I think 6 pounds of raspberries should get you to the "subtle fruit" range of flavor. Let it mellow a bit and I'm betting you'll have a nice balanced beer.

As far as the color goes, I haven't tried it yet, but you could try golden raspberries if you can get your hands on them in that kind of quantity.

blgreene:
So do the commercial guys just filiter the s*** out of the beer till it gets back to clear? Has anyone got a homebrew fruit beer to come out really clear? I just feel like I am going to have to do this decanting thing a couple of times to get the majority of the fruit crud out of there and have yeast be the only sediment during bottle conditioning...

And yes this is a 5 gal batch.

Joe Sr.:
How long have you let it sit?  Be patient, and it will likely clear.

If it's still murky, fine it with gelatin and see if that helps.  Or cold crash it.  Or both.

I wouldn't keep transferring it.

blgreene:
It hasn't been sitting for too long, five days or so. Maybe I am missing the point of secondary... I thought you want the beer to be off any bad flavors (dead yeast, fruit tannins, etc) as soon as the exponential growth phase of the yeast is over... Thus to clarify the beer and have it taste as clean as possible you do secondary to get the beer off the trub. So when I add the fruit in the secondary I added a tonne of sugars and started a whole new yeast population, most of which died and there is still all the fruit skin and such that I don't want on the beer. The sugars and flavor are soluble and since this is puree it should go right into solution right?

I think I will take my fellow homebrewers advice and not transfer it again, but unfortunately cold conditioning isn't an option for me until I get the beer in bottles, but I don't want to cold crash a bunch of fruit crap on the bottom of my bottles either. I just want the beer to be mildly fruity and not a smoothie, but it certainly doesn't look like a beer, its blood red and murky and smells like its extremely tart...

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page