Cask with Fruit

[Ell]

We're getting ready to do our first cask offering for a festival, and we're going to add strawberries to a wheat beer. We're planning on using a muslin bag to keep the strawberries from clogging the cask.

Do I need to prime with sugar, or will the sugar from the berries be enough?

Thanks!

Ell
Druid City Brewing

[JDrum]

I'm going to do coconut and pineapple (pina colada, anyone?) in a wheat for a cask offering... I was going to just count on the pineapple to provide enough priming sugar. Normally I would fill the cask from the FV about 1 degree before anticipated FG. I'm thinking that would be inappropriate in this case, unless I want a possible beer geyser on venting.

I'll report my results!

[inkybeer]

Fruit in Cask/Firkin

I'm planning on making a stout firkin with blackberry puree and wanted to only use the puree as the "sugar" to carbonate the beer.
Does anyone have a suggestion about how much puree to add? I was thinking one pound/two cups, then let it carbonate for 3-4 weeks.

Any opinions?

Thanks for the help!
Kim

[ptrain]

We have had firkins blow keystones when we carb'd with sugar and fruit...HUGE MESS! Looked like a scene from Dexter. So I would say the fruit does enough due to fermentation.

From a tapping standpoint, we always tap casks that are dry-hopped or with fruit the day before to let vent to give it time to settle once in place. I would still bag them up if you are pureeing fruit(putting the bag in the cask and fill it...takes some work), as it doesn't take much to clog the float or tap.

[populuxebrewing]

We do pins with fruit, and just regular dry hopped beer, and in my mind there's 2 big things to think about when it comes to priming:

1) Where the beer is when you rack it.
2) What the yeast will do once it's in the cask.

Most of our cask beers use the Wyeast 1968/Fullers strain which is highly flocculent and attenuates poorly. Looks great coming out of the cask, but if the beer is at FG it won't carbonate without a little help. That means a little priming sugar, or if it's a fruit beer, a little fructose. Now lemons are a pretty low-sugar fruit, and I wouldn't count on them adding enough oomph to get the cask right, but a can of pureed strawberries might do the trick on its own.

American Ale yeast on the other hand is quite active and unless your beer is absolutely, positively at FG, you'll get additional action from it in the cask. Rousing the yeast, move it around, keeping it warm while it conditions, all help squeeze out the last point.

My suggestion is to make 3 casks if possible. 1 which is primed and has fruit, 1 with just fruit and 1 just as is to serve as the test case. Bring both the fruit ones to the fest and if one is giving you a hard time, use the other.