Cranberries

After the Thanksgiving holiday I find myself with a leftover 12oz. bag of cranberries. I'm thinking of making an orange-cranberry wheat beer but i'm not sure how to handle the cranberries. Should I pasteurize, macerate and add them to the secondary? Or is it better just to rehydrate dried cranberries and add those to the secondary? I make one gallon small batches so I feel like 12oz. of cranberries will be plenty.

I've added dried cranberries to secondary before, but that was a sour beer that sat for months, and it gave it a nice, subtle cranberry hint. I haven't used whole/fresh cranberries, but I would think you crush and pasteurize them before adding to secondary (probably a little at time over the course of several days, since they are pretty intense).

Make a syrup for that Berliner Weisse you have 20 more gallons of sitting around that you just cant get rid of... oh wait that's me. Berliner anyone?

I just did this, after reading several suggestions on this board. I got 4 lbs of frozen cranberries, let them thaw out, and refreeze them to help break up the outer wall (I did this twice). Then I pasteurized them for 20 min at 155-160F. Then I added them to a carboy and siphoned my beer from the primary into the carboy.

I did it this way because I wanted to leave them whole. Hoping this will leave the beer clearer and less sediment and floating pieces of cranberry when all is done. Just did this yesterday so have a few weeks until I see how it turns out!

Thanks for the advice. Let me know how it turns out!