Secondary with fruit: How long to primary?

[SteveH aka shetc]

Hi All,

Going to make my first fruit beer by putting the beer and fruit together in a secondary fermenter. But how long should the beer stay in the primary fermenter to start with?

Thanks,

Steve

 

[porterpounder]

Until it's done fermenting, i.e. when the gravity reading is stable. Transfer onto the fruit and it may start fermentation again, so wait it out another couple of weeks and package when it's ready.

 

[SteveH aka shetc]

Thanks Pounder!

 

[C-Rider]

The answer is always.. Till It's Done.

 

[Shawn_Brewin]

I personally have to disagree with letting the beer finish before transferring onto your fruit. I personally wait until the Krausen has almost depleted, but before the yeast has finished its job. if you wait till the beer is stable and finished fermentation then a lot of your yeast will be weak from no food and a large number of them will have already dropped out of suspension. You want your yeast strong and plentiful still when you roll onto your fruit for two reasons:
1) the active fermentation that happens again when adding the fruits sugars is what churns the beer through your fruit and helps merry the two together.
2) any oxygen that might be present in the fruit or a product of the transfer still has a good chance to be pushed out from the fermenting process or cleaned up by all of the viable yeast.

Long story short, i shoot for about 4-5 days or whenever it looks like the fermentation is slowing down but not come to a dead hault.

 

[SwissRico]

I have to disagree with Shawn_Brewin (sorry), I have suffered from a stalled fermentation after transferring after 7 days. If you *have* to transfer, then I'd wait till it's done. But I would also consider adding the fruit to the primary rather than transferring to secondary (it depends on the type of fruit, whether you want to reuse the yeast, ...) there are multiple threads discussing adding fruit to primary. Have a read.

 

[castillo556]

I personally have to disagree with letting the beer finish before transferring onto your fruit. I personally wait until the Krausen has almost depleted, but before the yeast has finished its job. if you wait till the beer is stable and finished fermentation then a lot of your yeast will be weak from no food and a large number of them will have already dropped out of suspension. You want your yeast strong and plentiful still when you roll onto your fruit for two reasons:
1) the active fermentation that happens again when adding the fruits sugars is what churns the beer through your fruit and helps merry the two together.
2) any oxygen that might be present in the fruit or a product of the transfer still has a good chance to be pushed out from the fermenting process or cleaned up by all of the viable yeast.

Long story short, i shoot for about 4-5 days or whenever it looks like the fermentation is slowing down but not come to a dead hault.

Agree with this and just do it in the primary bucket. No need to transfer.

 

[SteveH aka shetc]

So I threw 5 lbs of mango mush into the primary fermenter with 5 gallons of rye pale ale. The beer had been fermenting for 10 days, and picked up a bit more action after the fruit was added . Going to let it go another 10 days to let the yeast do some clean up.

View attachment 1440267132669.jpg

 

[enkamania]

So I threw 5 lbs of mango mush into the primary fermenter with 5 gallons of rye pale ale. The beer had been fermenting for 10 days, and picked up a bit more action after the fruit was added . Going to let it go another 10 days to let the yeast do some clean up.

This is how I do it with my watermelon wheat and my strawberry cream ale

 

[SteveH aka shetc]

Mango rye ale finished at 6.2% ABV. Pre-carb sample tasted good with rye beer being the main flavor with a nice finish of mango. Looking forward to trying the carbonated version.

 

[SteveH aka shetc]

So I think this first fruit beer is a bit of a success. Most importantly, there is a good balance between fruit and beer so I would say 1 lb of fresh mango per US gallon of beer is a pretty good match. Also, the BCS rye ale recipe provides a nice backbone for the mango. I think I would maybe drop the bittering hops just a little bit for my non-hoppy friends. As you can see from the photo, the head doesn't last long even though there is plenty of wheat in the recipe.

View attachment 1442356691975.jpg

 

[Shawn_Brewin]

Looks good, nice job