Adding Fruit to fermenting

[MashBag]

Here you go....


winemaker
/ˈwʌɪmmmeɪkə/

Definition of wimemaker

: a person who makes wine but specifically one who over samples the wine-making product at a winery.

See also: drinker, tippler, boozer, drunk and lush.

[aamcle]

Or do it the easy way, add a puree I have used the Funkin brand so!d for making cocktails I bought it from amazon. No mess just pour it into the FV

Atb. Aamcle

[f00b4r]

What a bizarre thread.

Strawberries don't need starsan FFS , washing under the tap would be sufficient. An active fermentation will also clean up. The bigger issue is they float and risk getting infected - so best to crush them. Freezing makes them more digestible to the yeast, but certainly isn't mandatory.

Wimemakers (grape) use gravity. It clears just fine.

It depends on what you are making, there is a chance that fresh fruit/flowers (eg elderflowers) will have wild yeast or bacteria on them. Try throwing some elderflowers in wort and watch your FG be very low. Another way to kill the unwanted stuff is to pasteurise them, to avoid the jammy taste from boiling them.
In terms of clearing, if the fruit has a lot of pectin in it, then it will likely stay cloudy for a long time without treatment.
Good call on the floating though, you want the fruit under the surface.

[MashBag]

An active fermentation will also clean up.

This is a fact. An active yeast will and does dominate other wild stains etc. It is a tried, tested and taught method.

But there is also the option to use chemicals of course.

Edit: sorted typo's

[f00b4r]

I’m not sure, from the above, if you are trying to argue against both points but let’s take the clarity for starters. There is a great thread on the AussiCraftBrewing forum about fruited sours and the issue of clarity AND also its effect on taste in this particular style:

“Clarity heavily affects the flavour of this beer - and probably all kettle soured fruit beers. Without a dominant malt flavour there is little that will mask flavours of suspended yeast, pectins, trub in general. The difference in cloudy vs clear as far as flavour is concerned is huge.”

and a reply:

“Interesting re clarity.
My two batches of Raspberry Berliner Weisse are still a hazy pink even after sitting at 2C for nearly 5 months for the first batch and 3 months for the 2nd batch.
The bottles of the BW without fruit added were crystal clear within a week or two.
There must be something in the raspberries causing the haze.
The first batch I blended and pasteurised which caused a lot so small bits of fruit and seeds to make it into the keg which ended up eventually blocking the poppets (floating dip tube fixed that).
The second batch I just pasteurised and used a cheap plastic filter in the fermenter. No solids in the keg but still just as hazy.”

So that is almost half a year at just over freezing and it hasn’t shifted it and it also seems to have a negative effect on flavour. The Op has tried the usually fining agents but it did nothing but pectinase has the following effect; guess which one is without

221AA381-DD32-4A27-A107-B48002EACE75.jpeg (52.17 KiB) Viewed 11789 times

Of course gravity and time may well do the job in a lot of cases but pectin heavy fruit seems to cause a particular issue and potentially in flavour too.

[f00b4r]

In terms of yeast, yes it’s an arms race and you aim to dominate that with a nice healthy pitch rate but IIRC bacteria multiply much faster than yeast and if your yeast has low attenuation then it may be leaving a whole bunch of food left for other bacteria or wild yeast; think of how Brett can keep chomping away in a bottle of beer.
If the fruit is being pitched near final gravity the risk might be much lower (even more so in a sour beer with a low pH) but why take the risk, especially as fruited beers can be very expensive (probably why a lot of people use pasteurised pouches).

[MashBag]

Different folks different stokes. I just prefer not to use chemicals whenever and wherever possible.

Just chlorinated tap water..

[Jim2]

I w and to add some straw berries to my fermenting bucket. How do I Sanitise them or can u add straight into bucket.

I could just soak them in sanitiser?

Ta much

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

Not read the thread. But I use socks from the brew shop

[MashBag]

I use socks from George

[Binkie Huckaback]

I just found this thread as I'm looking to make a cherry beer. I'm at a loss as to why MashBag thinks this is a bizarre thread. It's perfectly valid to be concerned about adding something than hasn't been sanitised to your beer

An active fermentation will also clean up.

But there is also the option to use chemicals of course.

Everything is made up of chemicals.

What a bizarre thread.

Strawberries don't need starsan FFS , washing under the tap would be sufficient. An active fermentation will also clean up. The bigger issue is they float and risk getting infected - so best to crush them. Freezing makes them more digestible to the yeast, but certainly isn't mandatory.

Wimemakers (grape) use gravity. It clears just fine.

Professional wine makers use all sorts of things to clarify their wine. In fact, you'd be amazed at all the nonsense that is used to make wine. It makes brewers look like saints in comparison.

No, you don't need StarSan (other no rinse sanitisers are available), CJJ Berry recommended the use of campden tablets for killing anything on fruit for country wines, as mentioned by Jocky. Though you can sometimes find campden powder which is much easier to use.

Quite why campden and protofloc are supplied in tablet form when hty need to be crushed before use is beyone me. Especially protofloc for which you generally only need half a tablet per 25 litres. Then again, maybe it's really aimed at the pro market, in which case 100 tablets is easier than measuing out powder.

[f00b4r]

What’s the cherry beer you are making? You need a hell of a lot of cherries to get a good flavour in, I hope you have access to a tree or a good deal on them!

[Binkie Huckaback]

To be honest, I'm not yet sure what style of beer to make. I'm in a rented house at the moment and there's a massive cherry tree which next door's gardener says produces massive amounts of morello cherries. The frost and wind got a lot of the blossoms earlier in the year, but am hoping I might get enough for at least one batch of beer as well as some jam.

I'll probably only be in this house a year, so will be gutted if I don't get to make a cherry beer.

Oh, as an aside, I'll probably be using StarSan to sanitise them

[MashBag]

Would you eat them off the tree?

Sorry being naughty.... I will go and sit in the car.