adding fruit to cider

My wife is an avid berry picker as we have great u-pick places up here. I still have a ton of some kind of berry (black or marrionberry) in the freezer in large lumps inside of 1gallon ziplocs.

The question is, I want to add some of these to a new batch of cider I'm going to do. How do I go about doing that? I use better bottles so just dropping a tea bag of them in won't work very well. Do I need to sanitize them somehow first? Should I just blend them up and let the solid matter settle out with the lees?

Also, primary or secondary ferment? Which will give me better flavor?

Thanks!

I think its better to add the fruit to primary, inside some sort of mesh bag. If you crush the fruit a bit b4 primary, the yeast will get inside and extract all the goodness. Then you can squeeze the bag out at the first racking.

my biggest problem is that mesh bag thing and my better bottle...

I have been experimenting with the fruit additions right now, mostly for hard lemonade, but I have done a few 1 gal fruit ciders. I freeze the fruit help break it down.

In my experience and experiments, the fruit flavor is stronger and less altered if I add it at secondary. I think this could be the yeast going to town on everything and stripping some of the flavors out at primary. Not really sure.

As to the better bottle problem...depending on the fruit I just plop them in and then strain everything out when I rack to the bottling bucket. This works well with cherries and blueberries. However, strawberries turn to mush so their a little harder to deal with (makes straining take forever.) I can't answer for blackberries or marrionberries.

Let us know what you decide as I am curious!

I think I'm deciding to buy a bottling bucket and tea bag the fruit... we'll see what swmbo says =P

Why don't you press the berries. I would think if you produce juice first then cambden tabs would sterilize it. Boiling/heat would always be an option and break down the fruit fibers. We have a raspberry and blackberry bed I hope to turn into wine or just strait cider (no apples) in the future.

boiling berries would induce a pectic haze. maybe soak in vodka?

fendermallot said:

my biggest problem is that mesh bag thing and my better bottle...

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Yeah, sorry I didn't read your post properly, and don't know what a better bottle is. I would advise to do primary for a while in a bucket, then transfer to the bottle before sg gets to zero. Freezing is a good idea, definitely don't boil.
There are a lot of posts in the wine forum about blackberries, I think Yooper does a blackberry wine.

better bottles are PET plastic carboys. So the problem is the small opening in the neck.

fendermallot said:

boiling berries would induce a pectic haze. maybe soak in vodka?

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How about rinse with 1 Step?

fendermallot said:

my biggest problem is that mesh bag thing and my better bottle...

Click to expand...

Ya know, I think I read a post a while back about a guy who still did the mest bag in a better bottle, but he tied the top off with a fishing line and ran it out the top. The bung still made a good seal and all went as well. Sounds like you're into the whole mesh bag thing, so give it a shot!