Berries in da beer.

A question for any brewer with experience using berries in his/her beer:
I'm just about to make either a chocolate raspberry or cherry stout using a partial mash recipe. Now, I've looked up a couple of procedures and one of them recommends putting the berries into the hot wort after the boil and allowing them to remain in the beer until I rack to secondary and the other says to ferment the beer and put the berries into the secondary and rack on top of them. What does anyone think?
-John

I'd add them to the secondary, fo sho. You never know how much of the flavor will get carried out with the expelled co2. However, take note: if you add fruit to the beer at ANY point post-boil, you will need to sanitize/pasteurize them. I recommend mixing them with a small bit of water, and, if desired, puree them with an immersion blender. This is what I did with my cranberries---though I know that raspberries aren't the same consistency as cranberries. But either way, I'd heat the mixture up to short of 150F for 15 minutes, then cool. Add to the empty sanitized secondary vessel, and rack ontop of it.

If you add them to the hot wort after the boil, say between 170F and 150F, you are pasturizing them with the wort.

With my peach cream ale, I soaked them overnight in pectic enzyme. It helps reduce the haze caused by adding fruit to beer. Then I pasturized them and added them to the secondary and racked on top. I too was going for lots of fruit flavor with my beer and I added 7lb of fruit. There's not a lot of fun in transfering 7 lbs of hot fruit from the brew kettle to the primary.

If I had it to do over, I'd seriously consider using Oregon Fruit puree instead of whole fruit. Peeling fruit is a really pain in the ass.

For ale, I blanch, freeze, thaw, mash the berries and put them in the secondary. When I make cider, I put the berries (processed the same way) in the primary.