Adding fruit to secondary, how to sanitize the fruit?

I picked 5 pounds of Raspberries from my garden. Froze them for about a month. Then quickly swished around some sanitizer, then strained and added to secondary and it turned out alright. Next time I think I will skip the sanitizer route and just add frozen to see if it changes anything. Turned out good though.

I did a take on a hefe-weisen, which is about done in primary... I'm planning on racking it onto a pasteurized blueberry purée into secondary and hope that it retains enough flavor once it is done bubbling for the second time around, as I really don't want to do artificial flavoring.

For 2.5 gal batch, doing 2 lbs of blueberries - frozen, and puréed afterwards.

I sanitized using Vodka.

Ive heard to add potassium metasulphites. Does anyone have any experience doing this?

I don't do anything. Freeze the fruit and throw it straight into the bottom of the carboy.

Beaner1082 said:

Ive heard to add potassium metasulphites. Does anyone have any experience doing this?

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PT Ray said:

As soon as some fresh fruit comes into season, leanig towards peaches, I am going to make a fruit weizen. I plan on making a course puree to add to the secondary and using campden tablets to sanitize the must prior to racking.

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Campden/potassium metabisulphate doesn't really sanitize, it's just a wild yeast/bacteria inhibitor. It can also inhibit the yeast you want, as I understand it. I think to use enough that it is guaranteed to work, you'd be negatively impacting your beer, and pasteurization is much much easier. 160F is enough (I often say 170F to be safe but 160F and then a quick cool really is sufficient as long as you really get up to that temp).

I understand you're also just fine going with untreated fruit, though personally I'd want to blanch or thoroughly wash fresh peaches just to kill surface yeasts (most of the fruit wouldn't take any heat that way).

32indian said:

I tried it, still needs some more time to carbonate in the bottle, but, the 3.5 lbs. of raspberries was plenty, VERY GOOD! Mine is a light beer, only 3.6% alcohol and 15 IBU's of tettnager hops so the fruit flavor stands above the others.
I brewed this as a 10 gallon batch, and split it into this version with the real beeries, and the other 5 gallons went into a keg, where I added 4 oz. of the raspberry fruit flavoring extract, then force carbonated it.
The one with the exctract may be a little better beleive it or not, I was suprised as well. Of course with it being force carbonated, it is already up to the proper level and the fruit flavor is just about perfect for my taste. My wife even liked it

I will be making this one again.

-Tom

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32 dod you have the complete recipe for the above beer? Sounds good!

I read about a third of this thread, so perhaps my question has been answered.

A lot of you guys put your fruit in 160 degree water to sanitize. I'm planning on doing a mango beer. If I steep the frozen mangos in some water for 20 minutes, do you then just add that to the secondary? Water and all? Wouldn't that dilute the beer? And how do you cool it before you rack the beer on top of it?

If you're using a fairly small amount of water you don't need to worry about dilution or the temperature. You could do it with beer instead of water, if you care.

For 160F to pasteurize you really need to get the mangos themselves up to that temperature though, not just the water you put them in (relevant since they're frozen). Some people don't bother sanitizing frozen fruit.

Just read through all of this thread. Racking my ipa over some mango next week. Thanks for the tips.

I would use fresh mangos, cut them up, put them in Vodka to sanitize (you can also freeze them at this point to cause the cell walls to burst) and then into the secondary.

I let the fruit sit in spirit for a week than dump them into the secondary, so far so good.

Was just perusing this thread for a new idea and just thought I should add something...and maybe this has been said before somewhere on the 10 or so pages I didn't read, but maybe not.

I'm not sure why everyone is so concerned about infecting their beer by adding fruit to secondary...I know it's a little scary at first but I have never infected a beer by adding fruit in secondary.

I make a cucumber kolsch pretty often...at first I would sanitize my cutting board and peeler and knife and then dip each cucumber in sanitizer water before cutting (still that is hardly sanitizing) and adding straight to my secondary fermenter...and never had an issue.

Then I talked to a friend who owns a brewery that makes some of the best damn fruited beers in the world and asked about his method of adding fruit. "Cut into small pieces, freeze to break the cell walls, toss in secondary"...so after that I never worried about dipping my cucumbers in sanitizer or boiling or soaking in alcohol. I've gone of to use pineapples and mangos and other fruits and never once the slightest hint of infection.

The best fruit is fresh fruit and time is of the essence of getting that fresh fruit into your beer and into your glass quickly enough to enjoy a fresh fruit flavor for long enough to make using it worthwhile.

Im thinking about making a Mango IPa recipe.. im thinking about 8# of fresh mangoes frozen then dump it in secondary.. waiting on my fastferment to arrive to get this going... any advice??

BrianDorry55 said:

I'm not sure why everyone is so concerned about infecting their beer by adding fruit to secondary...I know it's a little scary at first but I have never infected a beer by adding fruit in secondary.

I make a cucumber kolsch pretty often...at first I would sanitize my cutting board and peeler and knife and then dip each cucumber in sanitizer water before cutting (still that is hardly sanitizing) and adding straight to my secondary fermenter...and never had an issue.

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I just brewed a Heff (Wheat extract, 8oz Carafoam, 1.5oz Tetnanger and .5 of Hallertau, 3068 with starter) that I intend to make into a Strawberry beer and was having a hard time drawing up definitive answers on a few things.

First, I've done alot of research (on this forum in particular) about the sanitation of strawberries and it seems the bulk of people agree to buy frozen fruit and use that because they are already pasteurized. However, the ones I've seen in the store don't claim to be pasteurized anywhere on the label. How does that work? I looked for the Oregon canned fruit Co. but they don't have strawberries now, so that options out.

I don't have a problem with buying a bunch of fresh strawberries (actually I'd prefer to do that since they're in season here in SoCal) and using them. I've been told to saturate them in 160F water for 10 minutes, freeze them, thaw, drain, and smash them up and dump them into secondary - but there's lots of talk about how the heat kills the flavor of the fruit (makes it tart) and that it's not as good as sanitizing with vodka or Idophor (perhaps).

Of course now I see the above post which seems to support that this is all a non-issue. Just wash it and go with it. However the guy at my LHBS insists fruit is way too risky and the only way to do it 'safely' is with the packet of Camden tablets he sold me. Of course the procedure for that was way unclear was not written down so it remains a mystery to me. What I gathered was to take a half a tablet and sprinkle it over a pan of smashed fruit, cover it and let it air out for a couple of days and then dump into 2ndary. Somehow leaving smashed fruit out on the counter (or in the fridge) for 2 days sounds like a recipe for crap soup, not good beer.

I think my issue is, and my LHBS pointed this out, there's alot of misinformation on the Net and it's easy to screw something up if you miss a step or misunderstand the writers intent.

So, I see alot of different approaches but can anyone help me settle in on an approach that won't make me want to heave the keg once I'm done with it? I've already had one IPA go south this year because of unclear info I found on here, it would be nice to get a consensus before moving forward and potentially ruining another.

Muchas gracias in advance.

I didn't get any feedback on the above post so I forged ahead and went my own way on this recipe. My batch started out life as a German Heff. After primary I split the bucket into two 2.5 gal batches and moved one straight into a keg and the other into another bucket for secondary. From there I took about 3-4lbs of sanitized/thawed strawberries and dumped them into the fermenter for 2 weeks and waited.

The process I used to sanitize was overkill and absolutely affected the color. Normally when we bring berries home from the store we soak them in a vinegar/water solution to prepare them for storage. I did this but after this I rinsed them in water and immediately soaked them in iodophor for about 10 minutes before moving them into sanitized freezer bags. As a result I dumped alot of 'red' down the sink. I think next time I'm going to skip the previous soak processes and go straight to iodophor so that less color gets washed out. When it came time to use the berries, I took the bags out of the freezer and boiled them in 170 degree water for 10 minutes, dumped them into a sanitized bowl, crushed them up, and dumped the slurry into the beer. I did see some mild fermentation after 24 hours but not much.

Initially (3-4 days) the beer did not take too much of the berry flavor at all so I gave it another week to see how the flavor developed. I could definitely taste it after 12 days. I kegged on day 14. Overall the beer has a very tart flavor (as other folks have mentioned it would) and the strawberry flavor is BIG. You can smell it in the glass and you can definitely taste it in the mouth. From a flavor perspective I hit this right on the head. I wish the original beer had more sweetness to balance out the sourness (I finished at 1.008). Most people that drink it think it's a 'really good sour', which it was not intended to be, but it does taste good and they always go for more. Maybe if I had pulled the beer off the yeast at 1.02ish it would have preserved some sweetness.

I'll absolutely do this again (I'm thinking of brewing a darker blueberry ale this fall) and work with the processes I used here. I think the three take aways I gleaned from it were:

1. Camden tablets are not necessary if you make an effort to clean and heat the fruit.
2. Over washing the fruit loses color.
3. It's necessary to adjust the FG a bit to cover for any sourness the fruit might impart. Going too 'dry' doesn't work well with the process.

BTW, comparing the two batches side by side is educational. Even though they started out life the same they could not be more different. You can certainly taste the same malt and hop character but the fruit process really changed the flavor. It's not for everyone but a real beer drinker appreciates it every time.