best way to add fruit to secondary

I've only made one fruit beer in the past which turned out well where I added the fruit to the hot wort. I've read the fruit flavour is more pronounced if you add it to the secondary, so I was thinking of thawing my frozen berries and adding it to my beer which has been fermenting with an ale yeast (and not a lot of krausen) for 5 days. I can't decide if I should boil or heat the fruit to near boil and then just strain the juice into the beer or add the fruit in a mesh bag to the beer after thawing in the pail it's in (I don't have another brew pail and don't want to fish berries out of my carbuoy).
I'm thinking the strained/pasteurized fruit should be OK...I expect a second fermentation (last batch I did the lid blew off the pail!) and have pectinase to cut back the hazing. Just wondering if you all had any advice - I dont' want to contaminate my beer...

Two years ago I made a black raspberry wheat. Not sure about the details anymore, but I believe I just threw them in a carboy secondary no bag, no pasteurization. Notes simply say "took forever to thaw and add to carboy." At 1 lb/gal in a 6lb 2-row and 3lb wheat batch, it ended up with lots of flavor but bone dry.

I just tried to remake this with the addition of 1lb crystal 60L and ~0.7 lb/gal black raspberries. This time I set the frozen bag out for ~4h, then placed them in a nylon bag and racked the beer onto them in another bucket. The berries thawed a bit but still pretty frozen. I'm hoping the 5.5 gal beer at 70F was enough to keep the yeast warm, and I pulled some extra yeast trub to help as well. I'll check it and hopefully bottle in the next day or two.

When I make my strawberry blonde, I just add the frozen strawberries, still frozen, to the secondary and rack on top of them. Never had an issue with an infection.

I pasteurized my peach puree and dropped it right into my primary ferementer after the first 3 days of fermentation. Continued to 2 weeks in primary and bottled. Turned out great. Just make sure to tie a hops bag to the out-flow end of your siphon hose to strain out the chunks as you move it into your bottling bucket or keg.

Well, last night I racked the beer 5 days brewed onto 6 lb half thawed strawberries in a brew pail after mashing the fruit a bit with a potato masher. With the fruit in the pail it was a perfect fit with me leaving the last inch of sludge behind. Put in a blow off tube just in case and will leave that for a week or so. Should I bother with pectinase now or wait a few days?? I am wondering if I will need it since I didn't heat the fruit, but more importantly should I rack it again to a carbuoy in a week or so or just leave it be and pop an airlock on?

Geosomin said:

Well, last night I racked the beer 5 days brewed onto 6 lb half thawed strawberries in a brew pail after mashing the fruit a bit with a potato masher. With the fruit in the pail it was a perfect fit with me leaving the last inch of sludge behind. Put in a blow off tube just in case and will leave that for a week or so. Should I bother with pectinase now or wait a few days?? I am wondering if I will need it since I didn't heat the fruit, but more importantly should I rack it again to a carbuoy in a week or so or just leave it be and pop an airlock on?

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I've made many a batch of strawberry beer, using frozen berries, and never used pectinase (not even sure what that is) and my beer always comes out crystal clear. The only fining I use is gelatin. I'd say you're good to go!

From what I understand pectinase helps dissolve the pectin produced by heating some fruits and helps clarify wines and beer. I've used it in malomels and wines and gotten nice clear product. I think I'll just leave the beer and fruit it be in the pail and pop on an airlock once it's done with any new krausen. Then I can rack it over to a carbuoy in a few weeks to let it clear and settle out a bit and get rid of the worst of the fruit before bottling in a few more weeks. Thanks everyone

pectinase sounds like an enzyme

Dolomieu said:

pectinase sounds like an enzyme

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anything ending in - ase is 99% of the time an enzyme. and the root of the word, pectin is its substrate

Just curious -after a few weeks with the fruit should I rack it again from the pail off into a carbuoy to clear or just bottle it? It hasn't foamed up as much as last time at all...I would think it would benefit from a bit of aging, but what do I know?

I'd say depends if you mind serving cloudy beverages or not.

Secondary is pretty much always a waste. Take your fruit, put it in a paint strainer bag, and drop it in the boil for 15 seconds to sterilize the outside. Drop it in primary. Your goal is to ferment the fruit.

rexbanner said:

Secondary is pretty much always a waste when making beer yet can be quite useful making mead and cider.

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Fixed it for you.

Just an update...bottled the beer a month ago and just had some. Very tasty with a slight berry taste. It has a bit of a fruit haze but I am not picky. Even my husband who is meh about beer likes it very much. Thanks for the tasty advice.

Here's my resulting beer. Roughly 5.5 gal wheat beer, 4lb black raspberries in secondary 8 days. It had a really winey taste at first which I believe came from previously using my secondary fermenter for wine. The wine flavors disappeared with time. It's got some berry flavor and still pretty dry.