Do you add fruit in your stainless conical?

[Rob2010SS]

I just added fruit to my SSBT unitank for the first time. While the beer turned out great and as expected, I have a question.

Getting all the fruit out of the tank was a bit of an issue. It was 3.5lbs of quartered strawberries and 2.5lbs of rhubarb cut up into 1.5" long sections. I was going to bag the fruit and put it in for ease of removal but when I filled the bags, they were too big around and wouldn't fit through the port on the top of the unitank, so I added it all in loose. When it came time to clean, I had to lug the tank out to my back yard and dump everything. Even then, it took some shaking to get it all out.

Anyone used fruit in their unitank? How'd you do it? Any tips or tricks?

 

[BrewKat]

Did you ever figure this out? I found your thread because I now have an SS unitank and wondered how hard it was going to be to remove fruit? What I found helpful in carboys was to use my fruit ninja to blend it up and poor it in to muslin bag. I was thinking of doing that for my unitank, but without the bag. I think I'll start with raspberries. Thoughts?

 

[Rob2010SS]

Did you ever figure this out? I found your thread because I now have an SS unitank and wondered how hard it was going to be to remove fruit? What I found helpful in carboys was to use my fruit ninja to blend it up and poor it in to muslin bag. I was thinking of doing that for my unitank, but without the bag. I think I'll start with raspberries. Thoughts?

Hey! Umm I’m going to say kind of lol. The trick, in my opinion, is making sure the fruit is in small enough pieces, or puréed in order to get it to blast out the dump port. My original post was really the only time I’ve had an issue and I think a majority of my problem was the rhubarb. Every other time I’ve used fruit (apples, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, blueberries) it was a non issue. I think raspberries you’ll be fine with a good hard cold crash.

 

[Rob2010SS]

Did you ever figure this out? I found your thread because I now have an SS unitank and wondered how hard it was going to be to remove fruit? What I found helpful in carboys was to use my fruit ninja to blend it up and poor it in to muslin bag. I was thinking of doing that for my unitank, but without the bag. I think I'll start with raspberries. Thoughts?

The other thing that sticks out is that after I had the issue in the original post, I’ve incorporated pectic enzyme in all of our fruited beers. Can’t say their directly related but figured I’d point it out as it’s worth noting

 

[jtratcliff]

another strategy would be to insert the bag thru the port while empty, then drop the fruit into the bag that's already inside...

You'd need to secure the bag so it wouldn't slide all the way into the port, but a rubber band should take care of that...

 

[BrewKat]

ok, thanks! I always search these forums and usually always find enough info to go on. Cheers! I feel really confident with blended raspberries and other soft fruits and adding them straight into the tank. I found a guy on Instagram that was using an SS Brite Tank for fruiting/secondary fermenting with whole fruits; which makes more sense given the geometry of those tanks.

 

[Jag75]

I know this is an old post but Fwiw , I've found that when adding fruit I prefer to rack beer over the fruit in a non conical style fermenter . It seems to me that the conical shape puts more pressure (compaction) on the fruit , which causes issues . When I've used a carboy with a spigot it worked better imo.

 

[bailey mountain brewer]

I don't always add fruit to my fermenter but when I do it's in my cheap big mouth bubbler. Sorry that should have been in meme format.

I also did as mentioned above, but the bag in the fermenter then dumped fruit in, tied the bag, and racked beer onto fruit.

 

[BrewKat]

Hehe, I might do a side by side on this and see if I notice a difference. I could also bubble some CO2 through it like I do with dry hops to get it up into suspension a little.