How long do you leave beer on DICED fruit?

Most of the threads I've read suggest 2-3 weeks. Anybody go longer?

I've got 5g of pineapple kolsch that has been on 6# of fresh diced pineapple (I froze it to rupture the cell walls then thawed it out before adding it) for just about 2 weeks now. While I haven't noticed much gas off (the beer isn't at my own house so I can't check it regularly) the chest freezer it is in does smell strongly of pineapple, so some gas off must of occurred. Last year when I brewed this beer, after freezing and thawing the diced pineapple out, I blended it into a puree before adding it to the fermenter. When I did that, it took a few days but then I witnessed lots of airlock activity (despite minimal krausen) and again got loads of pineapple smell in the chest freezer after the airlock activity happened.

But transferring to keg was a major pain due to all of the fiber exposed by pureeing the fruit and I worry that the blending process whipped lots of air into the fruit, so I went the diced route this time. I did not notice lots of airlock activity this time, like I did last time. While I'm not too concerned that the pineapple might not have fermented at all, I do believe it may take longer since I didn't puree it. I've been giving the carboy a light swirl every few days to keep the diced pineapple at the surface wet. How long do you think I should leave it before kegging? Should I just stick to my plan and keg at the 3 weeks on the fruit point? Any harm in letting it go longer?

 

My worry was more that some pineapple flavor and sugar is still trapped in the pineapple and not yet exposed to the beer.

 

Just my opinion...

Are you asking if soaking the fruit in starsan will hurt the beer or prevent possible infection from the fruit? If the former, I have not experienced any off flavors in my beer due to a touch of starsan. If the latter, I'd say it's not a method that offers a 100% guarantee that your beer won't get infected but it can't hurt.

I can only speak from my own limited experience, but when I add fresh citrus zest to beers I do take spray the fruit down with starsan prior to zesting it. Not sure if it's necessary, but the beers I've done this for have been quite good. When I make my pineapple beer each year, I don't even bother with starsan. Although I do usually sanitize the freezer bag that the diced pineapple gets placed in before I put it in the freezer. No problems with infection on the pineapple beers I've made thus far. Pineapple is quite acidic though and that might also be helping.

 

My approach is:

2.5 weeks in primary @ recommended (by yeast manufacturer) temp
Reduce by 3F per day until the gravity is about 4 points higher than your desired FG
Rack to secondary at that point and continue to drop 3F per day until you are at 34F - 35F
Hold at that temp for 2-3 weeks
Raise temp by 3F per day (on the carboy destined to have pineapple added) until you are back at the recommended fermentation temperature range (by yeast manufacturer)
Rack into a carboy with the pineapple
Let ferment for 2-3 weeks
Keg after that

 

Kegged the beer today. Man (as I had hoped) using diced fruit (instead of pureed fresh pineapple) made it so much easier to rack from the carboy to the keg. One thing I didn't think of though was that it was much more of a hassle to get the spent diced pineapple out of the carboy LOL. The spent pineapple lacked sugar sweetness and pineapple flavor, so I'm pretty confident both are now in the beer