Fruit in secondary??

THis is a two prong question. I am brewing my sunburnt wheat tonight and I was wondering what a good thing to put in the secondary would be? Looking for input on a good ingredient for flavor. Second. When do I add it to the carboy? Once the beer is transfered to the carboy do I wait till there are only a few days left in the secondary? This is the first time I have tried to add anything to my beer. Thanks for any help. Cheers

It really depends on what fruit you like. Raspberries are a pretty common choice.

You can add the fruit after main fermentation is complete. After you add fruit to it will go into a second fermentation till the sugars in the fruit are eaten.

Yeah be prepared for another fermentation. Sometimes it can get pretty vigorous when the yeast starts eating all of the fruits sugars.

I did this with 3 lbs of apricot puree to a proto-typical American Wheat. I tasted it yesterday (sample from the secondary when taking a SG reading), and I had no discernable apricot taste whatsoever. I'm now debating whether to add more puree (tertiary fermentation), or just get some extract to add while bottling. Anyone out there have any thoughts?

I don't like the idea of using an exract because i feel like I am cheating but thats just my opinion. I can't try it now since I don't have a large fridge anymore but i was wondering what would happen if you cold crashed, kegged, added your fruit, then removed it after a week or so?

I know there might be some sediment issues but since the yeasties should be alseep I would think they wouldn't eat the sugars in the fruit?

If you were going with a orange zest I had a freind soak the zest in a bowl of vodka for a week or two then remove the zest and just put the vodka in the bottling bucket along with the priming sugar. It seemed to give it some nice aroma.

Check my raspberry ale recipe for a lengthy discussion of the issues with managing fruit in your beer.

Ive brewed blueberry ale a few times and it doesn't matter how much blueberry I put in the fermenter, the beer doesn't have enough blueberry taste. So, I've settled on this process:

I brew my base beer, an APA or EPA base, light on the hops.
I wait for fermentation to kick in. Take a 1-3 lbs of blueberries, put them in a blender, add a couple shots of everclear (to suppress or kill any nasty fungi or bacteria that may be on the fruit), blend the stuff up, make sure its good and mixed by tasting several times, (you may want to get 4 lbs just in case.) Pour berry mixture into fermenter and watch the fireworks. I like to add the fruit during primary fermentation since the blended blueberries undoubtedly contain a lot of O2. I don't want to oxidize my beer by adding it to the secondary.

When the beer gets racked to the secondary, I will add 4oz of blueberry extract. This adds enough flavor to be noticed, but it isn't overpowering. The real blueberries add a nice purple tint and some aroma.

so what possible characteristic differences in the flavor would come from throwing the fruit into the primary after initial fermentation has calmed down as opposed to racking the beer onto the fruit in 2ndary?