Adding fruit to a recipe for flavoring

[Darren O'Neill]

Going to be brewing a Lemon Shandy recipe soon and I was thinking about maybe adding some raspberries or strawberries for additional flavoring. This would be a first for me so I'm looking for guidance on how and when to add them. Should I use the whole berries and just throw them in the fermentation bucket about a week before bottling or should I crush them first, add them to a bag and toss the whole bag in the bucket? How much berries do you recommend for a 5-gallon brew? Any help would be appreciated!

 

[50calshooter]

I leave mine whole and put them in a cheese cloth sack. For me four pounds of fruit for a five gallon batch makes a great fruit beer so for a little extra flavor in a shandy I would do may be one and a half pounds or two pounds, depending on how ripe or how rick the fruit was.

 

[Darren O'Neill]

Thank you very much for the reply! Two follow up questions: Do you put the berries (in the cheesecloth) in secondary or primary? Also, how exactly to you sanitize the berries?

Thank you,

Darren

I leave mine whole and put them in a cheese cloth sack. For me four pounds of fruit for a five gallon batch makes a great fruit beer so for a little extra flavor in a shandy I would do may be one and a half pounds or two pounds, depending on how ripe or how rick the fruit was.

 

[50calshooter]

I place them in the secondary. I dip them in a no rinse sanitizer before placing them in the secondary.