[pete b]

Earlier this summer I made about 7 gallons of a Rhubarb Rye Saison. i bottled 4 gallons and pitched brett L. Into the other 3 gallons about 3 weeks ago. I harvested peaches today and plan on, in the next few days, putting about 5 pounds of the peaches, after freezing and thawing, in a 3 gallon carboy in smallish chunks and racking the brett saison into said 3 gallon carboy. The general idea is to leave this upstairs (70ish ambient temp) for a couple months then rack off peaches into new carboy and put in cellar(60 ish) for a few months. Is this sound? Any ideas? Just fooling around with my first sour attempt on a whim.

[troybinso]

Generally sounds like a good beer, but don't expect it to be too sour. Brett doesn't really make beer sour, it just contributes some different esters and phenols that you don't get from Sachh.

[HoosierBrew]

Generally sounds like a good beer, but don't expect it to be too sour. Brett doesn't really make beer sour, it just contributes some different esters and phenols that you don't get from Sachh.

+1.  Sounds good anyway !

[dannyjed]

If you want some sourness, you could add some bottle dregs from some commercial sour beers.

[pete b]

It's actually already plenty sour from the rhubarb and saison yeast. Forget I said "sour". Do the methods, temp, and time, sound good given the info I gave?

[dannyjed]

Your method sounds fine to me, but you could probably skip the racking off the fruit until you're ready to bottle or keg. I would just be concerned about oxygen, but if you flush the carboy with CO2 there would be no worries.

[pete b]

Your method sounds fine to me, but you could probably skip the racking off the fruit until you're ready to bottle or keg. I would just be concerned about oxygen, but if you flush the carboy with CO2 there would be no worries.

The original saison, although very tasty, is cloudy. That plus having all those peaches on the bottom makes me want to rack it into a new carboy for aging so it will settle and hopefully clear. Its going to be fairly difficult to rack off the peaches into a bottling bucket without picking up sediment I think.

[reverseapachemaster]

Peach tends to be a delicate flavor in beer and often needs a larger than normal amount of fruit to deliver flavor. I think your process is fine except you may need to use 2lb/g or more peaches to even get a noticeable flavor. The problem with peach is that if you don't extract enough flavor you can end up getting a muted generic fruit note that isn't exactly pleasant. I gave up on peaches a while ago for exactly that reason. It's also why you don't see too many peach beers. The acidity from the rhubarb may help accentuate the peach but I wouldn't commit to using the peaches unless you know you can source enough peaches to add as much as the beer might need.

[pete b]

Peach tends to be a delicate flavor in beer and often needs a larger than normal amount of fruit to deliver flavor. I think your process is fine except you may need to use 2lb/g or more peaches to even get a noticeable flavor. The problem with peach is that if you don't extract enough flavor you can end up getting a muted generic fruit note that isn't exactly pleasant. I gave up on peaches a while ago for exactly that reason. It's also why you don't see too many peach beers. The acidity from the rhubarb may help accentuate the peach but I wouldn't commit to using the peaches unless you know you can source enough peaches to add as much as the beer might need.

I agree with everything you say about peaches in beer. We use at least 3 pounds/ gallon to get a nice peach flavor in mead. I think this will work though. Like you said the acidity of the rhubarb should help. IIRC we add lemons to our peach mead. The reason I am using peaches is partly that that's what's ready on the homestead now and partly because I think its a good match for this beer. Another positive is that these are freshly picked homegrown peaches and I set aside the ripest ones for this. They are not store bought peaches bred for storage. I'm going to use 5+ pounds in a 3 gallon carboy, I think the peaches and their juices will displace about 3/4 gallon so we're talking better than 2 pounds per gallon. Maybe I'll throw more in just in case. Thanks for the advice!