Fruit lambic... how to add the fruit?

[luckydevil]

This may be a stupid question, but I've read wild brews, listened to the jamil show lambic episode, and googled around and don't really see an answer so maybe I'm over thinkging.

I've had a lambic going for about a year, it's good and tart and funky, I want to do a peach lambic with half of it. I picked up a ton of great fresh peaches here, but not really sure how to treat the peaches. Do I bother with a quick job of flash boiling to kill off anything on the peaches? Is the ph low enough and the alcohol already present enough to kill off anything on the peaches? Does the bacteria already going in the lambic out compete anything on the peaches anyway? Do I just cut em up and throw them in a carboy and rack the lambic on top?

The other half is going to be a cherry lambic, but as I don't have local cherries I'll be using the cans of oregon puree, so I have no worries about sanitation there.

Thanks for any help

[brewinhard]

Wash the peaches well in water. Cut them up into chunks leaving the skin on. Place them in freezer bags and allow them to freeze thoroughly (I usually go at least a few days). This freezing stage will reduce the populations of wild yeast/bacteria (it wont fully eliminate them though), and allow the cell walls of the fruit to burst a bit to help make the internal sugars more accessible for fermentation.

Thaw the fruit and add to the bottom of a carboy. I use a sanitized plastic soda bottle turned upside down which fits into the mouth of a carboy perfectly. I also mash the fruit a bit with a sanitized spoon as I push it through the soda bottle into the carboy. Then carefully rack the beer on top trying not to splash. If you have the ability to, after racking, blanket the transfer with CO2 to minimize oxidation until the fruit fermentation kicks in (usually a couple days). I like to let the fruit sit in my sours for anywhere from 6-12 mos depending on the character you desire. Keep in mind that fruit (esp. peaches) will absorb a lot of beer and will be a PITA when trying to separate the two. Good luck!

[luckydevil]

Wash the peaches well in water. Cut them up into chunks leaving the skin on. Place them in freezer bags and allow them to freeze thoroughly (I usually go at least a few days). This freezing stage will reduce the populations of wild yeast/bacteria (it wont fully eliminate them though), and allow the cell walls of the fruit to burst a bit to help make the internal sugars more accessible for fermentation.

Thaw the fruit and add to the bottom of a carboy. I use a sanitized plastic soda bottle turned upside down which fits into the mouth of a carboy perfectly. I also mash the fruit a bit with a sanitized spoon as I push it through the soda bottle into the carboy. Then carefully rack the beer on top trying not to splash. If you have the ability to, after racking, blanket the transfer with CO2 to minimize oxidation until the fruit fermentation kicks in (usually a couple days). I like to let the fruit sit in my sours for anywhere from 6-12 mos depending on the character you desire. Keep in mind that fruit (esp. peaches) will absorb a lot of beer and will be a PITA when trying to separate the two. Good luck!

Thanks for the advice, that all makes sense and sounds great. I'll give that a go. You said it's hard to seperate the fruit and beer after it referments, any advice there too? Not that I'll have to worry about that for another year I guess.

[spiderwrangler]

Two things to add... check it while your fruit fermentation takes off, chunks of fruit are prime candidates for creating a plug in the neck of your carboy, with potentially hazardous results... a larger carboy would help avoid this, but then you would be more concerned with over oxidation in the headspace, so being able to purge becomes more important. As for getting the beer out and leaving the fruit behind, it will partially depend on what your fruit does by the time you are ready to transfer. I've not done a lambic, but did use 4.5 lbs of cherries in a cider before, and they pretty much all floated on top at the end. Peaches are probably going to be more pulpy, and somewhat of a pain. Using a sanitized bag or mesh on the intake of a racking cane DOES NOT work, it will just plug and you'll lose your siphon. What I'd recommend is using an autosiphon if you have one, and tying a sanitized fine mesh bag to the tubing end of your siphon. Any pulp will get caught in the bag and not make it into the finished beer (it's a good idea to weight the bag down with something too). I've used this for dryhopped beers that had hop bits floating around and was able to catch a cup and a half of hop matter. Once you get the siphon going, keep the cane end moving to keep pulp or fruit bits from clogging the intake. Since you've got the bag on the other end, you could possibly remove the cap on the cane to allow them to just flow through and get caught on the other side.