Question about fruit secondary

[Greg83]

Hello. I am in the middle of brewing a chocolate raspberry stout I ordered the abv boost and the OG was 1.061. This is only my second brew so I am still very new to this. My question is the instructions say to rack it to secondary in 5-7 days. I plan on racking it to secondary along with 3 pounds of frozen raspberries and a little touch of the extract at bottling time. I was wondering if I should let it sit in the primary for 2 weeks as opposed to the one the instructions say. I read A LOT of forums and most of them say minimum two weeks in primary.

What are your opinions if you don't mind me asking? Some people say just take a reading and if it reaches FG then its done. If it reaches FG and I leave it in longer does it increase the quality at all? I am also hesitant to take samples in case of infection.

When I was pitching the yeast I opened the vial and a decent amount exploded out. It was my first time using liquid yeast. There was some stuck in the sides of the vile so I put some wort in and shook it up and put it back in. I was pretty sterile while doing all this. Hope loosing some yeast won't mess this up..

Thanks for any help or suggestions.

 

[TequilaMockingbird]

Hi there,

The last time I used fruit in a recipe was when I made a black cherry schwarzbier two Christmases ago. I racked on to the frozen fruit in the secondary (cannot remember the amount I used off hand now), but I left this for four weeks, until the morello cherries lost a lot of their colour.

In my mind if you are utilising the fruit in a stronger flavoured dark ale, such as a porter, I would certainly leave this for about a month so that the delicate flavour of the rasberries has a good opportunity to establish & balance itself with the others flavour profiles in your beer. Don't forget the fruit flavour will mellow over time and if it is too subtle in the first instance, you could be in a position towards drinking the end of your batch where the raspberry flavour is lost altogether.

This is just my take of things, and others may have different advice.

Best of luck, sounds a delicious brew!

 

[Vman]

I agree with the poster above. The only thing I would suggest is (and I've done this many times, most recently with a Wit that I added orange, lemon and coriander to) is make an extract with the raspberries prior to pitching them into your beer. Maybe I'm being paranoid (infection is really easy to come by) but I'd put the raspberries into vodka and let them sit for a few days, them pitch the whole concoction into the beer. It will sterilize the fruit (to me frozen isn't good enough and I always worry about what the lump of frozen stuff is going to do yeast colonies) and will actually likely add more raspberry flavour as the vodka breaks down some of the fruit.

Just my 0.02 cents....

V

 

[ACbrewer]

Frozen won't sanatize the fruit - let alone sterilize. The only beer I dumped because of infection I think was because of the orange peals not being sanatized first.

Boiling can work, but it can also harm. A lot of the flavors we taste in food come from low temperature volitales, so boiling will drive them off. I don't know specifically for raspberries, but it is possible.