Help with fruit, herb, and spice additions

Hello, everyone!

I am thinking about brewing the Northern Brewer Petite Saison kit. From the reviews, it looks like a lot of people add orange peel, cardamom, etc., and that caused me to have some general questions since I've never attempted to alter a kit.

Are there general rules of thumb for the amounts of fruit that should be added? Should all fruit be added in secondary? Do herbs, spices, and fruits have to be pasteurized or made sanitary some other way? Or does the alcohol present during secondary take care of everything nasty?

Other than fruit, I assume that some herbs and spices can be added during the boil, whereas others should be added later... kind of like how you do when cooking (flavorers first, aromatics last)?

I know that is a lot of info to ask, but most of the comments I can find searching around are mostly of the "just throw it in there" type. Being a chemical engineer, I can't quite make myself do that :. If you have an opinion about what fruit/spice additions to this saison kit would be good I'd very much like to hear about it. Leaning towards raspberries or blackberries, or maybe orange peel. Anyways, any help you guys can shoot my way is appreciated!

-Blakely

Pretty much anything that does NOT add fermentables to the wort, like herbs and spices, can be added during the boil. Most of these are "flavoring" or "aroma" additions, so you can add them at 15 or 5 min left in the boil. Since they are in the boil, they will be sanatized by the boil temp. Orange peel would be considered a non-fermentable, not a fruit.

Fruit are fermentables that must be added to secondary fermentation. The easy way to do fruit is to buy the pre-packaged purees made especially for wine and beer making. These are already pureed and already sanatized. You would then dump these straight from the package into a secondary fermenter, and rack your beer from primary once it is at FG on top of the fruit puree in the secondary, then complete another 2-3 week fermentation, and bottle/keg as normal.

If you go with those pre-sanatized purees, that's the procedure. If you go with fresh fruit, the sanatizing procedure varies for different fruits, so just figure out your recipe, and someone will let you know the procedure to sanatize it. Some are OK with freezing, some need to be boiled.

Great information! Thank you very much. I hadn't seen anything but extracts available on various websites, but I was not looking for the right thing. Got it now!

I'll post the recipe that I end up with as I work on it. Thanks again!
-b