Fruit in the Secondary

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TedLarsen

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I have a batch of plum (actually pluot) working, and yesterday I transferred it to the secondary.

I had put the chopped plums in a cheesecloth bag, but when I pulled it out, I saw that some a fair amount of small pieces of the flesh had escaped the bag and were floating about.

I sterilized a strainer and did my best to get all of that out, but I see there's some (not a lot, but a little) in the secondary.

Two questions:
1) Will the presence of the fruit flesh cause a problem in the secondary?
2) How do I get it out of there -- even if I don't need to find a way to get it out right now, I certainly need to strain it out of there at the next racking, right?

Any help or suggestions you can provide this newbie will be appreciated!
 
It's generally in the secondary that fermentation finally drops off. This means that particles will continue to be suspended in the must in the secondary until that time ... and so you can't rack effectively til then *anyway* (until things drop out of suspension and the lees develop at the bottom of the carboy).
This is when you rack the wine off of both the fruit particles and also the flocculated/settled yeast ... so just wait the couple or few weeks until things all settle to the bottom then use a racking cane and length of siphon hose to rack the wine to a new jug/carboy, being careful to leave the sediment at the bottom of the current container ... being careful to not accidentally suck any of the lees up by getting the siphon hose too close to the bottom.
 
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