Fruit Additions - why secondary?

Why not add the fruit additions to your primary, say a week after pitching the yeast (assuming a week will keep more fruit flavor than directly adding puree at pitching time)?
Why bother transferring it to a secondary? So what if the trub is thicker?


(I use plastic buckets not carboys, so easy of cleaning is not a concern)

Some do some dont. Myself, I use secondary only for fruit/spice additions. I just feel better doing it, thinking itll be more clear and less mess in one fermenter. Adding 7 lbs of peaches today actually to my summer ipa.

Some do...it's actually smarter to add it to primary THEN racking it off the fruit and into a secondary to let it clear and get it off all the fruit trub. In my experience if you add fruit to secondary then you really need to rack it off into tertiary.

As long as you do it gently, without splashing, adding it to primary at the end is my preference. Mostly because it's tough to get a bag of fruit out of a carboy!

A few brews ago I added peach puree to the primary The yeast ate all the fructose and took all the peach flavor with it. It just raised ABV a bunch.

If I were to do it again I would use peach chunks and add them to the secondary and then rack it to a tertiary.

So if I were to put fruit into the Primary, what's the proper procedure? Wait until gravity stabilizes, *then* add fruit and let sit for a week or two?

And would I still need to secondary, or would moving straight to a bottling bucket be okay?

Oh, and when you say tertiary, is that something other than a bottling bucket?

I put the fruit in at flameout once and it turned out so well I got 2nd place (36/50) at a local homebrew competition.

I just cracked my first raspberry wheat last night and did kind of an of an odd ball procedure. I made the beer as normal and then once it was finished fermenting I racked it onto 1.8kg of crushed frozen raspberries in a primary bucket for 2 weeks cause I figured it was going to be a lot easier to clean all the fruit out of a bucket than a carboy. I then racked to a tertiary, which is just a third vessel (mine happened to be a carboy), cause there was still a ton of stuff floating around in the beer that I wanted to let settle. When I racked to the bottling bucket I still had to put a straining bag over the auto siphon to keep all the fruit chunks out.

Primary=1st fermentation
Secondary= 2nd fermentation (where you settle things out and add fruit)
Tertiary= 3rd fermentation (where you settle out the fruit trub)

What I am saying is that i would ferment in the primary and rack to a secondary where you add my fruit. Fruit leaves behind some crud that makes beer cloudy I would probably rack to a third fermenter so I could clear out the stuff the fruit leaves behind.

If you add the fruit in the primary I would think that the sugar in whatever you are adding could re-start the fermentation process and in my experience eat up all the fruit flavor you are trying to add.

I don't know if you wash your yeast but if you do you will have a lot more trub to clean up if you add your fruit to the primary.

Ah ha, I see.

Okay, new question. So if I'm going to do the three steps as outlined above, would it be okay to secondary in my bottling bucket, then tertiary back to my primary bucket, so when I'm ready to bottle I can just rack *back* to the bottling bucket?

One issue I'm thinking might be the large amount of headspace in the buckets. Is that a problem, and are there other problems doing it hat way I;m not thinking of?

I only have my primary and bottling buckets at the moment, no carboys.

As long as it's clean!
Too much head space isn't an issue.

Paymygasbill77 said:

As long as it's clean!
Too much head space isn't an issue.

Click to expand...

Sweet, thanks. I'll have to give this a try.

What I do is much like Paymygasbill77 said.
Primary until it's done, a week to 10 days, then I harvest the yeast.
Add my fruit puree (Oregon's) to the secondary (6 Gallon better bottle w/ spigot) and rack the beer in.
Depending on how it looks after about 2 weeks, I may rack it to another better bottle or just keg it.

If you have a lid that goes with your bottling bucket you could do primary and secondary in those. As long as you have 6 1/2 gallon buckets you should be fine.

VaBrewer said:

What I do is much like Paymygasbill77 said.
Primary until it's done, a week to 10 days, then I harvest the yeast.
Add my fruit puree (Oregon's) to the secondary (6 Gallon better bottle w/ spigot) and rack the beer in.
Depending on how it looks after about 2 weeks, I may rack it to another better bottle or just keg it.

If you have a lid that goes with your bottling bucket you could do primary and secondary in those. As long as you have 6 1/2 gallon buckets you should be fine.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I have the standard 6 1/2 gallon primary and bottling buckets. I only have the one lid, but I figured I'd just keep using it on whatever bucket has the beer in it.

Thanks for the tips.

Further to the OP,

I plan on starting a Strawberry Blonde Ale tomorrow night. If I wanted to use only two vessels, could I do this:

• Primary Bucket 6.5G - Let ferment for 10 days, confirm hydro readings on day 8 and 10 to confirm fermentation is complete.
• Primary Bucket 6.5G - After the fermentation, simply add a sanitized bag of my cut strawberries to the primary right on top of the primary trub cake.

• Secondary Better Bottle 5G - After berries and beer have sat for three additional weeks (almost 5 weeks in primary) transfer to secondary for five days
• Secondary Better Bottle 5G - Cold Crash for two days @ 6C to drop any remaining excess yeast / fruit trub
• Secondary Better Bottle 5G - Rack into Bottling Bucket

There would be a two week bottle conditioning / carb wait at 70F after bottling.


So folks, how does this schedule look? Should it work well this way? Should I use my secondary for immediate Cold Crash after racking from primary and skip the 5 days sit in the secondary?

Note: When I rack with my auto-siphon, I always have a sanitized paint strainer on the end of the siphon, always helped me get more beer with less trub, and will hopefully help with fruit (which is already in its own bag).

I have never used Strawberries so I am not sure how they will make things go, but when I use Raspberries or Cherries I have to put on a blow-off tube. They kick off some volatile fermentation! I use a 6 gallon Better bottle for that reason, so I can see what's going on and have the extra head space. I've had airlocks clogged and lids blown off before - especially with raspberries.

I would do the secondary, and just let it go until it stops fermenting - however long that will be. Then stick the whole thing in the fridge/keezer to cold crash.

I like the idea of the mesh bag, I'm going to have to use that next time! Good luck and let us know how it turns out.

Just remember... If you add fruit puree to the primary you run the risk of the yeast eating all of the sugars and the flavor. I did a peach wheat once and threw the peach puree in with the wort. It raised the ABV a whole bunch but didn't leave any peachy flavor at all. Furthermore I was told not to add fruit in at the boil because it has a tendency to make a hazy beer.

VaBrewer said:

What I do is much like Paymygasbill77 said.
Primary until it's done, a week to 10 days, then I harvest the yeast.
Add my fruit puree (Oregon's) to the secondary (6 Gallon better bottle w/ spigot) and rack the beer in.
Depending on how it looks after about 2 weeks, I may rack it to another better bottle or just keg it.

If you have a lid that goes with your bottling bucket you could do primary and secondary in those. As long as you have 6 1/2 gallon buckets you should be fine.

Click to expand...

+1

I harvest my yeast too. That's the only reason I rack onto fruit in the secondary instead of adding my fruit to the primary. I'd add to the primary if I didn't want to harvest yeast.

Revvy said:

Some do...it's actually smarter to add it to primary THEN racking it off the fruit and into a secondary to let it clear and get it off all the fruit trub. In my experience if you add fruit to secondary then you really need to rack it off into tertiary.

Click to expand...

+1

This is the way I have switched to doing fruit - in the primary then off of the fruit into a secondary for about a week. If not, you really do need a tertiary as it is difficult to get all of the fruit junk out with only 1 racking. Probably depends somewhat on what type of fruit, but I have found that this helps significantly.