Sanitizing and adding blueberries to secondary fermenter

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YOpassDAmike

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I recently brewed a 5 gallon batch of a saison that is currently in the primary fermenter. Once the beer ferments out, I plan on transfering the beer to a secondary fermenter (I want to rack the beer on freshly crushed blueberries). The saison will be bottled (bottle conditioned) therefore, I do not want the wild yeast of the blueberries to create bottle bombs or gushers that is why I want the blueberries sanitized. My question is how to I sanitize the 5-8lbs of freshly crushed blueberries? Boiling the blueberry slurry will give me an unwanted cooked fruit taste. I heard about using a campden tablet to sanitize crushed fruit but I am unsure how to go about doing this. My worries about using a campden tablet is that it may kill my sasion yeast that I want to use for bottle conditioning the beer, also I'm not found of adding unwanted SO2 into my beer. Will the campden tablet also kill my saison yeast strain with the wild yeast? Are there any other ways to sanitize these blueberries?
 
i wqould even suggest in most cases sanitation of fruit is not really required (unless using things like peaches with fuzzy skin etc.)

if you buy pre-frozen from the store, they dont need sanitation.
buying fresh and freezing is a good way to help leach flavor out,

easily enough to carry out is take berries from freezer (most bugs are killed off by freezing, those that aren't crush 1 campden tab up and sprinkle of your frozen berries. leave for around 24 hours and add the whole lot.
 
This is my standard practice for fruit in beers...(actually just did one with blueberries, and I typically use my saison base)

Buy frozen fruit, preferably "organic" or "natural" (but honestly half of the blueberries I used last time were Publix brand frozen). When I'm ready to rack onto them, sanitize the carboy/vessel, but leave like an inch of sanitizer in the bottom. Dump the fruit in, swirl it around to rinse the fruit, then dump out the sanitizer, keeping your hand over the opening to keep the fruit in, obviously. This method hasn't failed me yet /knocks like hell on wood.

*Note: Honestly, I don't really know that the sanitizer "rinsing" of the fruit does much. TBH the next time I do fruit I'm skipping that step and just dumping the frozen fruit into a sanitized carboy and racking on top.
 
I'm skipping that step and just dumping the frozen fruit into a sanitized carboy and racking on top.

if i buy frozen from the store this is all i do.
while not sanitary, its generally cleaned and in good shape.
the alcohol should kill the majority of bugs anyway.

if its frssh, i tend to use a camopden tablet once its ready to rack.
 
Seeing how it's a saison and probably at 1.006 or lower, if it were me I would just dump the berries right in. If I wanted to add fruit to a beer with more residual sugars, I might consider pasteurizing the fruit beforehand. Just my subjective opinion, but I'm skeptical a surface sanitizing can really kill all remaining bugs on or in fruit. To properly sanitize something it needs to be scrubbed clean and smooth beforehand, which is impossible with an organic product like fruit.
 
I'm skeptical a surface sanitizing can really kill all remaining bugs on or in fruit. To properly sanitize something it needs to be scrubbed clean and smooth beforehand, which is impossible with an organic product like fruit.
I agree completely. Hence why I'm omitting my "rinsing" step moving forward. It's just a PITA and messy.
 
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