Fruiting a Sour

I have never used a barrel but I'll tell you how I do it in a fermenter(carboy). Once the beer is almost done I add the fruit, brett, and/or something like Roselare or bottle dregs to a clean 6.5 gallon carboy and rack the beer onto the fruit. I let it sit up to 6 months, then rack that back to a 5 gallon carboy and let it sit a few more months. Then I rack directly to the keg and start enjoying.
I use frozen fruits(for me it's always either cherries or crabapples) that break down somewhat in the fermenter and don't worry about pressing the fruit either before or after.

 

Added some Trader Joes dried bing cherries in a hop bag with some marbles to weigh them down. Shoved them down the neck of the carboy. Been sitting for a month and tastes like cherry deliciousness. 1 lb/3 gallons

**I have no real experience or authority on sours, this is my first one, so don't take this as experienced info, just what I did.

 

I've used fresh (you should freeze it to break up the cells al bit) and dried fruit. Put that into a steriziled carboy and rack the sour beer on top. Fresh will usually be done in 3-4 months, dried takes a bit longer. Rack it off when ready to package.

 

I'm in a similar boat, have my 1st Flanders Red/Lambic/?, but after reading some in Jeff Sparrow's, Wild Brews: Beer Beyond the Influence of Brewer's Yeast, have decided to make it a Kriek. I plan on using 16 oz of organic Tart Cherry Juice Concentrate (Dynamic Health) which I know is a faux pas of sorts, but the best I could find under the circumstances. It says, 1 serving (2 tablespoons) is the equivalent of 80 cherries. How much would you use (if you had to) in a 5 gal batch? I'm thinking this one might be ready to go in as little as 1 month (been in a barrel for ~ 1 year already). Currently thinking about using the entire 16 oz bottle of Concentrate.

 

Before I fruit a sour I always taste it, you should never decide on what fruit to add before you taste a beer

Sometimes a beer would be great with cherries, other times cherries in the beer would clash and not taste right, taste your beer then decide

as to timing and what to do, I usually suggest going no longer than ~2mos, any longer and the fruit flavor is fading, I also tend to stay away from purees and use whole fruit. things like peaches/apricots are quartered and tossed in with pits, cherries go in whole no processing. Firmer fruits can be frozen and thawed to soften a bit, softer fruit like peaches should not be (mush = hard to rack)

I would never suggest anyone add fruit to a barrel, your just asking for a mess, add the fruit to a carboy and rack the beer on top of the fruit, add a airlock and let it rip

 

for peaches be sure to use the white flesh type, they tend to impart more flavor than the yellow type

I just rinse with hot to the touch water, and that's just to get rid of yeast gunk, if you really wanted to you could use something like starsan, its not gonna really kill anything though it might clean out the gunk a bit better than water

I would also suggest not letting it sit on the fruit more than ~2mos, as longer just = fruit flavors fading

 

You'll also probably need a lot of peaches. Its a more subtle fruit compared to say raspberries or cherries.

 

you might add some apricots along with the peaches, I havent used apricots in a sour but Ive had Cantillon Fou' Foune and it has an overwhelming flavor of peaches

Peaches in my experience, like james pointed out, are very subtle, even the white variety

 

You need a ton of peaches. I did a peach berliner with 6lbs of peaches in 5.25 gal batch and got a little flavor out. I would say 8 lbs for a 5 gal batch would be good.

 

Both

I did a write up on my thoughts long ago here, some of my preferences have changed a bit (Ive changed how I balance acidity) but the general idea is there

a quick synopsis is, taste, note how sour it is and the general flavor profile

With WY/WL cultures I tend to notice three distinct flavor profiles (Citrusy/clean - Earthy/funky - lacking acidity with a mix of the other two profiles)

Once I have this I use the following fruits for each case



with the caveat that if you beer is quite sour already you probably dont want to add something like pineapple, blackberries, etc that will add quite a bit of its own sourness to the beer, and a beer lacking acidity will also display characteristics of being citrusy or earthy/funky and should be matched with an acidic fruit that meshes with that flavor profile

e.g.

Not sour, earthy -- Rhubarb, blood orange juice, blackberries

Not sour, citrusy - passionfruit, pineapple, etc

Sour, citrusy - mango, apricot, etc

Sour, Funky/earthy - Dates, heather, prickly pear, etc


as to not warranting fruit, well that depends on the beer. Ive had a lambic (wild culture) that tasted like peach juice and hints of smoke. It was an amazing beer, and I felt that adding fruit would take away from the flavors that were already there, so I bottled straight and enjoyed as it was

 

I used 15 lbs white peaches in 4 gallons of sour beer.