fruit/etc in primary vs secondary

pretty much all recipes i've seen say to add fruit (or anything else) into the secondary fermentation, rather than the primary. im wondering what the logical reasoning behind this is - and i couldnt really think of anything. so whats the deal, why do things go into secondary?

also, why is it a bad idea to put fruit into the boil, but its ok to put most other things into the boil?

phuzle said:

pretty much all recipes i've seen say to add fruit (or anything else) into the secondary fermentation, rather than the primary. im wondering what the logical reasoning behind this is - and i couldnt really think of anything. so whats the deal, why do things go into secondary?

also, why is it a bad idea to put fruit into the boil, but its ok to put most other things into the boil?

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I think the reason for the secondary addition is because there's a lot less activity going on there. More chance for the fruit flavors to come through and not get fermented away. I added a vanilla bean to my secondary on my brown ale and it REALLY comes through.

The last batch I brewed up had 21 oz. of pureed blueberry pie filling in it. Only I added it to the last 10 minutes of the boil. Why I did this, I have no idea. Funny thing is that I'm just now realizing I did that. Oh well. Point of NOT adding fruit to the boil is that it'll release the stored pectins in the fruit which, apparently, are bad. Not only that, but when I racked that over to the secondary and tasted it, the blueberry flavor was pretty much not there. I'm going to have to add extract flavor at bottling instead to get my desired end result....

You don't add to boil because of pectins, as NUCC98 says. Pectins are what makes jelly gelatinous. If they are present in your beer, you get a haze that will never go away.

Also, boiling fruit drives away the more delicate flavors.

Same reason you add dry hops to the secondary really. Anything where you want the freshest possible flavor, you want to wait until the fermentation has quieted down a bit and then add. Cheers!