I am brewing a second batch of a very nice hefeweiss, only this time, I want to add apricot puree to the primary. My brewshop suggested adding it to the primary a few days after pitching yeast so as to ferment out some of the sugar, and leave a less strong flavor. Can anyone advise me on how best to dump in the fruit without causing an infection? Should I just sanitize the outside of the can, and the can opener? I would assume that the puree itself has been pasteurized. Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.
If you want, sanitize the outside of can and opener, then just add it to a secondary and rack the beer on top. Easy peasy. It’s what I do.
+1 to dropping it in the secondary and racking on top.
I’ve added fruit purée directly to primary and have never had contamination issues, fwiw.
Thank you all! Will sanitize well, and pour it in.
I agree with racking onto the fruit, but is a few days after pitching the yeast a bit too soon to be racking the beer off the yeast cake?
Yeah, it is too soon. I should’ve been more specific. I wait until primary fermentation is done, then rack onto puree in secondary. The secondary fermentation from the fruit seems a lot more gentle to me, so IMO less of the fruit aroma/character gets driven off as opposed to the more turbulent primary fermentation.
I’m getting ready to brew my American Peach Wheat with Peach puree. (like Wheach) I have always waited for fermentation to complete and then rack to secondary onto the fruit. I experience a bit of secondary fermentation form the puree and once it’s complete I crash and package. I’m sure you can do this in primary once fermentation has finished but I don’t personally know anyone that does it that way
Plus if you are adding the puree just a few days into primary with a rocking top-cropping hefeweizen strain you may as well be dumping your money and puree down the drain as it could possibly blow off right out of your fermenter.
I too have always allowed the primary fermentation to slow or finish prior to racking the beer on top of the puree in a secondary fermenter with great results.
This thread is inspiring me to bottle my last gallon of bretted peach saison that’s in my root cellar. Last year I made a 7.5 gallon batch of rhubarb saison and when I bottled that I racked 2 gallons on top of 2 pounds of ripe peaches from our tree and pitched some brett. Its pretty darn delicious. I’ll be making a large batch this year.
Edit: I actually think it was a lot more than two pounds of peaches.