My Bottling Horror Story (or When Fruit Gets Stuck In Your Bung!)

[Interloper]

Hi All, please enjoy my surreal bottling experience from last night:

After reading a great K+K recipe on this fine site for a Raspberry Ale I had to try it. I brewed a can of coopers real ale, let it sit a week and then racked it onto 500gms of frozen raspberries and threw in a 440gm tin of black cherries and let it all sit for another 10 days.

Ohh the smell and the colour! Superb. I figured it was as good a time as any to bottle it last night as I had some free time, SG was stable at 1004 and nearly all the fruit had dropped and there was a crust of yeast at the bottom of the racking cube. The raspberries where almost white they had given up so much colour to the brew. All perfect signs or so I thought.

So I got ready to bulk prime, dissolved my sugar and put my racking tube in my bottling bucket and turned the tap from the racking cube on.... and I waited.... and waited.... and sure enough the fruit had clogged the tap.

As I stood looking at it thinking "what the f**k am I going to do now?" I thought my options where to:
a: try and use the racking cube to siphon it off the fruit (like you would if you were stealing petrol)
or
b: gently pour it from the racking cube to the bottling bucket...

I figured option a would introduce possible bacteria and might not even work, so I went with option b. I know, I know. I must have been insane. Gently pour? What the hell was I thinking?

So I'm pouring the brew as gently as I can and looking at all the foaming going on in my bottling bucket and thinking "Oh man this much oxygen can NOT be good" and suddenly one measly raspberry went into the bottling bucket.

"Ahh no big deal" I think to myself, one raspberry can't hurt. What are the chances of that getting into the tap of the bottling bucket?

So I put my bottling wand on the tap and grab my first sterlised longy and wait.... and wait.... and wait... no damn beer coming out!

Well as it turns out that damn raspberry went straight to the tap and blocked it. So here I am pacing around my shed thinking "How the hell am I going to get this brew into bottles?"

Now comes the most insane part (as if my decision making wasn't bad enough!!).

I pulled the bottling wand out, turned the tap on and put my mouth over the tap and blew into the fermenter to desperately try and dislodge the berry. (Dude Seriously? Yes Seriously!)

It worked for about a half a longy and then got blocked by the one lonely raspberry again... I figured by now I had probably wasted this brew and it could not get any worse so I simply kept blowing into the tap and replacing the wand and continuing until I filled my bottles.

So now I'm wondering just how badly this is likely to have affected my brew? Will all that oygenation/aeration make it skunky? Will my filthy mouth germs have infected the brew?

Any opinions?

This has put me off racking onto fruit for life - what do others do to avoid this blockage issues?

The great tragedy is that I tasted the brew out of the dregs in the fermenter and it was awesome... hint of berry/cherry sweetness, slight tang of ale biterness and not too dry

 

[dicko]

Apart from the oxygenation of the beer, I would be extremely concerned with the fact that you blew back into the brew with your mouth on several occassions.
If it is now bottled I would leave it to see how it goes but I would be sampling it as soon as it is carbonated and if it tastes half reasonable I would be drinking it asap.
Long time storage will more than likely turn into an undesirable beverage

Cheers

 

[Interloper]

Long time storage will more than likely turn into an undesirable beverage

And I was stone cold sober!

Why is it that the longer it sits the worse you think it might get? Is it that the filthy mouth bacteria will breed in the bottles?

 

[Benniee]

Sounds like an enjoyable evening

Only one way to tell if the brew will be any good - wait and taste...

I have done a couple of meads with fruit in them and found a good trick was to tilt the fermenter away from the tap. The fruit will then tend to settle leaving the tap clear (depending on how much fruit you have in there).

I also crash chill the brew before bottling to make sure the pulp is settled down as tight as possible.

Treat it as a learning experience rather than vowing to never use fruit ever again.

Benniee

 

[Benniee]

Is it that the filthy mouth bacteria will breed in the bottles?

Don't forget there is alcohol in there to help ward off some of the nasties.

At the end of the day you did what you had to do to get in in the bottles. What was the alternative? Throw it out? Then it would definitely be wasted - 100% certainty. At least you're still in the game with the bottles you've got.

Benniee

 

[Interloper]

Don't forget there is alcohol in there to help ward off some of the nasties.

Let's hope!

At the end of the day you did what you had to do to get in in the bottles. What was the alternative? Throw it out? Then it would definitely be wasted - 100% certainty. At least you're still in the game with the bottles you've got.

Yeah that's it - what were the alternatives?

I had visions of ringing my mates and saying "OK boys so just how hard core are you? Ready to drink your way through 22 litres of uncarbonated cherry-berry ale on a Wednesday night?

 

[reVoxAHB]

Sorry to hear about your misadventures. Sounds like all was salvageable until you blew into the bottling bucket. The human mouth has something like 500 different types of bacteria (which have been identified) with a few species of fungi and protozoa thrown in for good luck. I'd consider the batch a write-off, aka lesson learned.

Next time, get yourself a racking cane and rack off the top being careful not to disturb the fruit bed. Make sure you use a racking cane tip too, which will prevent clogging:


reVox

 

[Interloper]

Next time, get yourself a racking cane and rack off the top being careful not to disturb the fruit bed.

Yes I kept hearing my biology teacher lecturing about the filthy human mouth as I was blowing into the bottling bucket. *sigh*

Hitting teh googles now to look up racking cane - how do these work exactly?

 

[petesbrew]

What a nightmare!
I remember having a few problems with the fruit and seeds too upon racking & bottling. I also forgot to put in the sediment reducer in the secondary too.
Did you blend or puree your raspberries to begin with? I did (along with a gentle simmer), and reckon it helped. I think puttin the fruit into a grain or hop bag helps too.

All the best & hope they're drinkable!
Keep us posted on the tasting.
Pete

 

[Interloper]

What a nightmare!
I remember having a few problems with the fruit and seeds too upon racking & bottling. I also forgot to put in the sediment reducer in the secondary too.
Did you blend or puree your raspberries to begin with? I did (along with a gentle simmer), and reckon it helped. I think puttin the fruit into a grain or hop bag helps too.

No I did a raspberry cider where I pulped and boiled the berries along with the fermentables and I reckon the fruit was wasted as I can taste very little raspberry in the final product. I didn't get the pectin haze some people have mentioned, it's ver clear cider, just not a lot of berry flavour or colour. That's why I racked onto fruit this time. Grain bag sounds like another good piece of kit to have.

All the best & hope they're drinkable!
Keep us posted on the tasting.

Will do... Sample in 2-3 weeks to see how they are going and I'll post details then.

 

[bconnery]

As for the current beer, drink it as soon as you can and hope for the best...
for fruit beers I like to do an extra little bit of conditioning, a tertiary as it were.
I put the fruit in in secondary, or added to the primary depending on laziness/beer type/fermenter availability.
I then rack the beer to another fermenter for a few days prior to bottling, often putting in the fridge to help drop out any stuff.
Doing it this way very little fruit makes its way into the final stage for bottling.
I know increased chance of issue with transfer etc but I have never had a problem.

 

[dicko]

And I was stone cold sober!

Why is it that the longer it sits the worse you think it might get? Is it that the filthy mouth bacteria will breed in the bottles?

The truth of the matter is that the result will be entirely unknown until smelling/tasting etc.
Once the beer yeast has finished working in the secondary stage (bottle) any wild yeasts if present will continue to chew away at the fermentables left and the longer it is left to "brew" the worse it will probably get.
It is worth assessment before you tip the lot out

Cheers

 

[Fents]

did you have a sediment reducer screwed into the tap?

 

[Interloper]

did you have a sediment reducer screwed into the tap?

Nope.... Most of the bottles look OK after a week, but there are some suspicious 'bloom' looking floaties in the last bottle I capped, so not sure if it is sediment or the beginings of a new life form.

Will taste them in another week and report back after 2 weeks in the bottle - if they don't explode or grow legs and walk away before then

 

[PostModern]

You can start a siphon without sucking the hose, and without a fancy shmancy autosiphon, too. First, sanitise your hand. Not just dip it in iodophor solution for a second, but wash it for 60 seconds with anti-bacterial soap. Then get your sanitised siphoning hose and put it completely into the liquid you want to siphon. Then use your sanitised thumb to block the end of the hose. Lift the blocked end away from the beer and place it into the receiving vessel and release the block. Instant siphon. From then, just manage the hose so it doesn't pick up any blockages.

 

[Fents]

yea wasnt really suggesting to filter out the sediment but i would of thought that NO fruit would clog a tap with a sediment reducer, the gap is tiny.

 

[Interloper]

Oh just an update: Tried the Cherry/Berry Ale that I had to wrestle into the bottles after my clogged tap:

(This was a Coopers Real Ale kit, racked onto 500gms of raspberries and 440gms of black cherries.)

2 weeks in the bottle, excellent coppery/rust red colouring, strong berry nose, sweet but not overpowering. Nice carbonation at only 2 weeks, great mouth feel but extremely tart.

Not a hoppy bitterness, more of a sour flavour. Drinkable, but lip puckeringly tangy at this stage.

I'll ignore them for another month and sample again then.

At this stage it does seem like I have gotten away without infecting the brew, but I can't place this sourness. It doesn't taste "off" but I'm hoping that it settles a bit after some bottle conditioning.

 

[bconnery]

I wouldn't wait a month myself. Even allowing for the cold weather fruit beer character can, but might not, fade fairly quickly.
I'd try another in a couple of weeks, just for interests sake...

 

[Interloper]

I wouldn't wait a month myself. Even allowing for the cold weather fruit beer character can, but might not, fade fairly quickly.
I'd try another in a couple of weeks, just for interests sake...

OK will do... according to tasting notes on Kriek/Cherry ales the sourness is part of the flavour profile and I certainly have the colour nailed.

Will post in another fortnight on the flavour then.

 

[0M39A]

who knows, you might have gotten lucky and picked up a slight lacto infection, which would be spot on for this brew.