Fruit Beer: To Stir or Not to Stir

Made an apricot wheat beer last weekend. Racked beer on to apricot in secondary fermentor yesterday. It began bubbling almost immediately and died off after a couple of hours. Not sure if the yeast have access to all the fruit since I did not stir it up after I racked it. Should I give it a gentle stir now? Or just leave it alone? Im torn. Help!

I just racked part of a belgian wit onto some nectarines this Sunday. Fermentation started again and has a nice even head of krausen on it still; probably a finger thick. I used a pretty large proportion of nectarines to beer like 6 nectarines (no peel no pit) to about a gallon+.

I've heard it's best to just let the beer sit on the fruit for extended time maybe a month or more to let the flavors be absorbed basically. I don't think a little stir would hurt, but I'm not sure if it's necessary.

When I've dry hopped with a lot of whole cones they seem to just float on top for the duration not really coming in contact with most of the beer and they certainly still do their job. This is my first "fruited" beer so someone else more experienced may chime in.

If the apricot floated like hops or some berries do it would make sense that it would come out well without stirring. As the flavoring leaves the berries or hops I would think that gravity would draw it down through the beer imparting its flavor as it goes. Im just not sure about my apricot puree which is sitting on the bottom of my secondary bucket. I used 3 lbs of apricot puree so it was a decent amount of fruit.

What form were the apricots when you racked? Purreed? Mashed? Whole? How much apricot for how big of a batch? How much fruit flavor are you looking for?

EDIT: Just saw you answered these in your 2nd post. I wouldn't think you need to stir. Puree should be good. Was this for a 5 of 10 gallon batch?

I recently kegged an Apricot IPA with which I am really happy with the results. I had taken just under 2lbs of fresh apricots (for a 5 gallon batch) that I blanched, fork mashed (still leaving descent size chunks), froze over night, defrosted and racked on top of for 3-4 weeks in my secondary. I did not stir. Some apricot stayed on bottom, some floated on top and were covered in the hops. When I cold crashed, all the apricot went to the bottom.

This process gave me a nice subtle and sweet apricot aroma and flavor, which is what I wanted. Nothing overpowering. It was a perfect complement to the hoppy-ness of my IPA.

Stirring could introduce oxygen. I would just rack ontop of the fruit. The yeast and sugars will get to where they need to go.

BeerMeUp said:

This process gave me a nice subtle and sweet apricot aroma and flavor, which is what I wanted. Nothing overpowering. It was a perfect complement to the hoppy-ness of my IPA.

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my process was about the same as yours. Only differance was I heated my apricots to 160 for 15 mins to pasturize.

How long did you leave your beer on the fruit?

I don't have the dates in front of me, but I believe it was just shy of 4 weeks, which was actually about a week longer than I planned, but life happens.