Wheat beer question-

It seems as if the general consensus on wheat beer is to bottle directly from primary.

It also seems as if fruit beer benefits from a secondary and even a tertiary fermentation.

So whats the deal with fruited wheat beers then? It seems to me as if the best middle ground would be to fruit the primary, move to secondary, then bottle. Any thoughts on that?

I've never made a fruit wheat (only ales) but I think that I would still use a third stage if I used real fruit. That stuff is pretty sludgy at the end of the second stage.

Sorry, I was unclear. I meant fruit the primary, syphon into the secondary without the fruit, then bottle.

I make a lot of German-style Hefe Weizens and I do secondaries.

I've tried the 10 days then bottle/keg method, but was VERY dissatisfied with it. There was way too much yeast in the glass.

The reason we secondary is to allow the yeast to fall out. In this case when I rack to the bottling bucket/keg I will also rack SOME of the yeast with the brew to get it back into suspension again. This provides me with enough yeast to keep the beer cloudy without racking extra yeast unecessarily.

As for adding fruit, I will always advocating adding it to a secondary. This way if your brew goes TU (tits up) you're not wasting any fruit.

In my experience, the flavor and aroma of the fruit is more intense when added after the bulk of fermentation is done. The CO2 from fermentation scrubs some flavors and aromas from the beer.

I like the idea of adding to the secondary (instead of still in the primary) because once the fruit is added, fermentation re-starts....and the wheat yeasts I use go crazy. If there's a thick layer of yeast at the bottom of the carboy, it gets stirred up a bit from the activity. One only needs so much yeast in a Hefe!