Will I have an issue with sweetend frozen berries?

I made an extract raspberry wheat 6lb Wheat DME and 1oz Halletuners hops (forgot how to spell it). I have it in my primary with about 1 maybe 2 days before its ready to go into a secondary. I want to add reaspberrys to my American Wheat. So at my local store the only sold frozen raspberries that had a small ammount of sugar. I'm assuming its table sugar, I will be steeping the raspberries to pasturize them and after chilling them I will add them to a secondary (will rack my beer over them). Has anyone had good or bad result with lightly sweetend frozen raspberries?

Just make sure that there aren't any preservatives in the berries. Give me a second to look up the ones that inhibit yeast activity and I'll post back

Ok, vitamin C (ascorbic acid) is a preservative that ALLOWS fermentation.

The preservatives that prevent fermentation are ones that end in "ate" (potassium sorbate and sodium benzoate).

I don't even know if these are used in frozen fruit products, or if the small amount added to the secondary fermentation process would even affect it at all. Just trying to help out a bit

Well..wonder if i let it ferment out and just add the berries afterward. Wouldn't it just give it flavor and taste and really not inhibit any of the fermentation process..but I guess it would just be overly sweeten from the non fermentable sugars in the fruit and the added sugar.

There is very little non-fermentable sugar in fruit and berries.

tenchu_11 said:

Well..wonder if i let it ferment out and just add the berries afterward. Wouldn't it just give it flavor and taste and really not inhibit any of the fermentation process..but I guess it would just be overly sweeten from the non fermentable sugars in the fruit and the added sugar.

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Ya, I think the concentration of any bad preservatives (If there even are any) would be so low it wouldn't really matter. I used frozed raspberries in an ale recipe I made and it turned out pretty well!

Weird, all the frozen fruit (cheap, store brand even) has no added sugar...you might wanna look further...

but, when you add berries, expect fermentation activity, even if there's no added table sugar. If it were me, I'd rack after primary ends to secondary, on top of the raspberries. Wait 3 weeks, then rack again and bottle/keg.

half thaw the berries, and smash em up really good in the bag, then squeeze em into the secondary. this really breaks down the cell walls so you get the goodies out.

Oh, I've heard that no more than 9-10 days letting fruit sitt is enough that no more can be extracted by extended aging with fruit. Secondly, I purchased a cheap $1.00 grain bag if i sterlize it, should i put the fruit inside to make it easier to seperate? Also is steeping the berries at 150F for about 5-10 good for not necesseraly pasturize my fruit but make sure alot of the bad bactiria and what not are gone?

I think bags a a pain in the secondary (small carboy neck), but if you're worried it won't settle out, that may be an option. I've never used raspberries. However, I have used strawberries and would recommend skipping the bag, but using iodophor to wash the fruit.

If you keg, it's pretty easy to throw stuff in a sterilized bag, and drop it into your keg. If you tie some dental floss to the bag, you can leave it sticking through your lid gasket and it will still hold pressure. This is super easy to remove for dry hopping, and I imagine it would work well for "dry-fruiting" too.