I have three kegs of a BA sour stout sitting in the fridge at 40 degrees with about 16 pounds on them. one keg has sour cherries, one has blueberries, one has apricots in them. they've been sitting like that for about a week now and I did a sample bottling from each of them with a blichmanns bottling gun and when i opened later that night to see how they are carbing, there's very very little carbonation in them, some bubbles but still basically none. anyone have any ideas or thoughts to this? I'm guessing I should remove the fruit first but i cant see that being an issue for carbonating
I carb with fruit, no issues, but make sure I have a stainless braid on the dip tube to avoid fruit in the bottles / glasses. I find with my beer gun I have to chill the beer way down, and up the carbonation pressure in order to get proper carbonation. If it's foaming a lot while capping you're losing a lot of your carbonation. Also make sure you freeze your bottles!
I think you might be fine and just need more time at 16 lbs of pressure and 1 week in the keg (although I'm sure a little research would reveal how many volumes of CO2 you should have by now). I have carbed with blackberries, blueberries, and cherries in kegs before with no issue. You should be ok.
25 to 30 lbs co2 for 3 days generally gets the beer to the right carbonation. Then drop to 10 lbs and you should be golden. The fruit will make no difference inside the keg.
