Adding fruit sanitised with Campden tablets.

[Gil Breau]

Thin it down, but keep each seasonal within those borders

That way, you rotate the brews seasonally, and the styles in those brews yearly.

[Kyle]

good ideas Gil.  Richard, I think I said, or meant to say I can't prepare a mead in 6 WEEKS, months is definately possible. I find around the three month mark it can be good, assuming moderate original gravity

[Richard]

Moving back to the OT - at this point this brew is _clearly_ infected. I couldn't even bring myself to take a sip it smelled so bad.

I will not be using the campden method of sanitising fruit again, not until I've figured out what the hell I did wrong this time (where I supposedly used twice the amount I needed and still got an infection). I'll just use heat in future.

I hate throwing a batch out

On the plus side, thanks to Dean's generous carboy loan and this one becoming freed up... I can brew my IPA for the next competition and re-do this recipe sans-campden. Double-winning!

[youtube:c80lx6j8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHPOzQzk9Qo[/youtube:c80lx6j8]

[Richard]

Thinking about it; what I did was:

Took the fruit + pureed it in a non-sanitised bowl.
Added two powdered campden tablets.
Threw the whole lot straight in the freezer with a lid on the bowl - somewhat airtight but not entirely.
Took it out, let it thaw, threw the whole lot in the brew through a sanitised funnel that's got a couple of scratches.

I can see about half a dozen vectors for infection there.
 - Scratches in bowl.
 - Not giving campden time to work before freezing.
 - Scratched funnel.
 - Surfaces of bowl not touched by campden would not be sanitised.
 - Freezing is intended to rupture cells, which I suppose could have been harboring bacteria away from the campden's reach.
- Bowl not being airtight could have allowed bacteria in.

So er... oops.

[Dean]

I think you're over paranoid and that reason #2 is your culprit

[Gil Breau]

What i did with the cherries I just used was to actually bake them.

Took a little meat therm and set the oven to 180F, and when the fruit hit that temp, let it sit in there for 20 more mins, then cooled it in the fridge overnight. So far, the batch seems ok (minus me forgetting there's sugars in fruit, and having the airlock WTFEXPLODE on me)

[Richard]

Dean: yeah... I suspect you're right. I think they need 24h to work. Either way I'm going to stick with what I know in the future (heat).

Gil: aye as long as they hit the right temperature it's all good.

[Dave Savoie]

When I make Fruit wine my process is

Freeze berries
Place in Bucket
add 1 Gallon boiling water with one Campden Tablet let stand 24 hours
Proceed to add the rest of Juice
One could follow the same process with beer making just remember your adding extra sugars aswell as Volume of liquid OR............
You purchase pure fruit Puree which is 100% sanatized already add directly to secondary and away you go (my prefered option VS fresh fruit for beers and based on the cost of fresh fruit now adays its probably cheaper to buy the fruit Puree VS fresh from the store just my 2 cents

[Kyle]

yeah, I think reason #2 was the problem.

Also, NG is having a sale on the raspberry puree.