Adding Fruit - Whole, crushed or juiced

I am getting ready to add raspberries and blueberries separately to my Hef in the secondary. I understand that I should heat them both to 160 for sanitation and then cool. My question is to add the berries whole, crushed, or juiced.

 

Crushed or juiced is fine...juiced would prob get more flavor into the beer much quicker than crushed...just depends on how long you plan to let it sit prior to bottling/kegging

 

The boiling will remove a lot of flavor, personally I skip it. Crushed or juiced makes for the quickest conversion.

 

I would avoid heating the fruit. You run the risk of setting the pectin which could cause haze. You have alcohol in solution already, which will inhibit bacteria, and your pH should be low as well. I'd say you're safe adding right to the fermenter. Using whole fruit takes longer but makes it much easier to separate when racking.

 

A related question, when aging on fruit, is it done at room temp or cold temps?

 

You'll want to do it at room temp so the yeast can get at the sugars in the fruit. Plus, flavor extraction happens a lot faster at room temp than cool.

 

I always freeze my fruit and add as chunks large enough not to clog up my autosiphon. I did the heated method the first time, and it was unnecessary. Every fruited batch since has been frozen into the fermenter with no issues. Mashed or otherwise "gunky" fruit is a maaaaaaajor PITA when racking to the bottling bucket.

I always leave the beer at the fermentation temp, but my room temp fluctuates too much during the day to want to do room temp.

 

Are you bottling or kegging? When I kegged a strawberry blonde, I basically took the frozen strawberries, cut them in half and put them in the blender. I then put the pureed fruit into a muslin bag and then put that in the keg. It turned out great..

 

I've only used frozen Costco fruit and puréed when 1/2 thawed and tossed into secondary.

 

Ive only done one batch with fruit (peach IPA), but i was told to boil it so the fruit is sterilized. So I did. (i chopped the peach up into 4 pieces)

Currently bottle conditioning. But i am surprised to see so many people not sterilizing their fruit. I figured boiling did take some of the flavor away, but thats why i only boiled for 3-5 minutes.

 

From my research, "boiling" is never the preferred method. Holding it around 150-160 for 10 minutes or so would be ok, but boiling sets pectins as stated previously, making for hazy beer. In secondary, the beer is no longer as hospitable of an environment for bacteria growth. Freezing often will kill off bacteria, breaks cell walls to make sugars more accessible. I have no need to change methods, it's working great for me. I often use a combination of frozen fruit and extracts to get a good pop of flavor in the beer. Fruit alone was a little lower fruit intensity for my liking.