Adding Fruit Question

I fruit in Secondary. Generally for about a week. That provides enough time for flavor extraction, and also enough time for the yeast to ferment the sugars from the fruit.

I've never tried fruit in primary. One concern would be how to add it to primary without splashing.

 

I also add fruit in the secondary, usually racking onto the fruit and having minimal splashing.

 

I usually add fruit, in the form of purées or juice, at kegging to preserve sweetness and flavor. You’d be suprised how little flavor fruit has once you ferment all the sugars out.
If you are bottle conditioning, this isn’t an option.
When I do add before kegging, it’s to the secondary. Pick overripe fruit and use more or less depending on the fruit. Grapefruit? One per 5 gallons is probably enough. Strawberries? You’ll need pounds of the stuff.
Freezing the fruit first seems to help break it down and make it more accessible to the yeast. Never add fruit to the boil especially without pectin enzyme, unless you want jelly beer.

 

If you are using purées, I think Oregon purées recommends .5-2lbs/gal. That Italian company whose name escapes me is 3oz./gal.
Fresh fruit is difficult to say. It really depends on the intensity and ripeness of your fruit, the intensity of your beer, how much fruit flavor YOU want. There’s no set amount. You’ve really got to play around with it.
I would recommend to use more, rather than less (2-4lbs. of each), skin and freeze all the fruit first.

 

Agree with Johnny I'd use 3-4 lbs of each. Usually use 4 lbs of strawberries per 5 gallon batch and get tons of strawberry flavor so mixing the two you might be able to do 3 of each. Everyone else has pointed you in the right directions. Freeze your fruit for sure. I've also had good luck with thawing it, muddling it, and refreezing. I always use a muslin bag with strawberries to keep the seeds from getting in the beer.

Also if you are using a normal glass carboy chop the fruit up small. It's a pain to get the fruit back out especially after it soaks up some beer.

 

One note about using fresh strawberries, just for general information, is that all of the fruit flavor is right up around the red skin. All of that whitish pulp inside is basically flavorless. So, if you wanted to spend the time so that you had less pulp to deal with in your fermenter you could peel them first.

Another thing to note, with any fruit, is that if you've used real fruit you can then use just a drop of extract to help it show a little brighter in the aroma. You don't want so much that it shows as extract, just a little, and you'll be surprised at how it livens the real fruit that's already there. Blueberry is another great example where that does wonders.

 

?? What if you want to use a keg as a secondary. How much fruit can you use in 5 gals without pouring out the top.