First time fruit beer - colorless chunks floating?

[grittanomyces]

So after mashing up, pasteurizing, and adding 3 pounds of kiwi and 2 pounds of strawberries into my kolsch, I go to check the beer a couple days later to see how it's doing.

Open up the lid, and what I see is a bunch of colorless chunks of the fruit floating at the top, as if the good stuff from it had fallen but it had not.

What is concerning about this is that I'm not even sure all the fruit chunks are even submerged, so I'm kinda scared to open up the lid and possibly introduce oxygen and bacteria that I assume could cause some nasty stuff on the parts that aren't submerged.

I'm also wondering if it's going to drop, or if I'm going to have to try my best not to disturb the "fruitcake" when transferring to keg.

I was brave enough to taste it, and it tastes great, fruit flavor really starting to come through, but just wondering if I need to get the bleached remains off it, or what would be the best course of action. Thanks.

 

[WayFrae]

If you can, try cold crashing it. That should drop everything to the bottom.

 

[solbes]

Cold crash once its done. No worries on the colorless chunks. The beer took what made it great and left most of the fiber behind. You may have to watch your racking so as to not plug up your cane.

 

[grittanomyces]

Thanks for the advice so far.

Interested to hear if anyone has exerpeince with this and not able to cold crash, but fortunately this happens to be one of the rare times my kegorator is empty, so just gonna go ahead and cold crash so I don't have to worry about it.

 

[Einherjar]

Every time I've used fruit it's floated at the top of the vessel. I don't cold crash, just siphon from below the fruit layer. Never had a problem with anything getting into the hose.

I don't think cold crashing will make the fruit drop anyways. These aren't microscopic proteins or yeast cells, they're big chunks of fruit. Maybe some of the little slivers of pulp that might have broken off will sink down, but if anything colder liquid being denser will just make the chunks all the more buoyant. But I'd be interested to hear if I'm wrong so keep us posted.

 

[WayFrae]

Every time I've used fruit it's floated at the top of the vessel. I don't cold crash, just siphon from below the fruit layer. Never had a problem with anything getting into the hose.

I don't think cold crashing will make the fruit drop anyways. These aren't microscopic proteins or yeast cells, they're big chunks of fruit. Maybe some of the little slivers of pulp that might have broken off will sink down, but if anything colder liquid being denser will just make the chunks all the more buoyant. But I'd be interested to hear if I'm wrong so keep us posted.

Cold crashing drops whole leaf hops that float on the top so I don't see why it wouldn't drop fruit.