Pabst Blue Robot
Well-Known Member
I've been talking to a long time brewer about adding fruit to beer. He said that he's tried adding it to the primary, secondary, and even to the keg and liked the results of adding it to the keg the best. He just uses a strainer bag and plops it right in and racks on top.
I've been mulling over the idea of doing a 10 gallon American wheat for a wedding this summer and splitting it into to 5g batches. I have two bags of frozen fruit, 7 lbs of strawberries and 4 lbs of blueberries/marrionberries/rasberries. I think I'm going to follow his advice and add the fruit to the keg.
This brings up the problem of stabilizing. When I make wine, I use potassium metabisulfate to stabilize, but I usually allow a day or so for it to gas off and drop out the yeast before racking into bottles. So my question is, should I stabilize at the end of secondary, in the keg, seperately, or not at all? I want to avoid pastuerizing the fruit so I get the most flavor out of it. I also don't know really want it to start up a new fermentation with the fruit sugars in the keg. Options that I haven't considered?
I've been mulling over the idea of doing a 10 gallon American wheat for a wedding this summer and splitting it into to 5g batches. I have two bags of frozen fruit, 7 lbs of strawberries and 4 lbs of blueberries/marrionberries/rasberries. I think I'm going to follow his advice and add the fruit to the keg.
This brings up the problem of stabilizing. When I make wine, I use potassium metabisulfate to stabilize, but I usually allow a day or so for it to gas off and drop out the yeast before racking into bottles. So my question is, should I stabilize at the end of secondary, in the keg, seperately, or not at all? I want to avoid pastuerizing the fruit so I get the most flavor out of it. I also don't know really want it to start up a new fermentation with the fruit sugars in the keg. Options that I haven't considered?