im new to brewing w fruit so bear with me for a minute. if you add fruit to a fermenter during primary or secondary, i'd assume a lot of the sugars in the fruit would get eaten up by the yeast and you wouldnt get a lot of the fruit characteristics in the end product. do brewers just add tons of fruit and/or puree to get fruity flavors or do they add something to the beer after primary fermentation is complete to kill off the yeast? again, i'll say i have little to no experience in this arena and am very curious as to what would work best thanks for the info!
First of all, you put your fruit in a secondary for sure. Don't put it in primary. There is way too much yeast and it will just leave you with tartness of the fruit. Besides that, it depends on the type of fruit. I make a peach wheat that I use a little lactose to bring back some of the sweetness with. I use a lot of peaches. However, it doesn't take much cherries. I experimented with a chocolate cherry stout and it did not do the cherry cordial flavor I was hoping for. We experimented by using some products they use in wine to stop yeast reproduction and sterilize the yeast so we could keep some of the residual sweetness. What are you hoping to do? That would enable people to help you more.
Not just a lot of the sugar that the fruit contributes will be fermented. All of it will. Bottling before this finishes creates a risk of overcarbonation and bottle bombs. If by fruit characteristics you mean sugar sweetness, then yes, all of that characteristic would be lost. But the other flavor/aroma compounds from the fruit will not ferment (because they are not sugars).
Thanks for the replies. I'm talking about beers like new glarus does, where you really know there's fruit in there and not just aroma compounds. Btw, I've had the bottle explosions you've mentioned and that was a silly rookie mistake :/
One thing that I think enhances NG fruit beers is that they seem to use a sour ale base beer for many of them. Think of a flanders brown ale. There is some tartness and some residual sweetness. I think both features enhance the beer. I'm not sure of their process though, especially towards the end. They manage to retain a fair amount of sweetness in the bottle. This is a nut that I would like to crack. On the other hand, as much as I love their fruit beers, I only drink a couple bottles or so a year. As long as I live in WI, these beers are readily accessible and I may not feel compelled to make one. As for adding the fruit in the primary vs. secondary, I think you'll get more resemblance to fruit in secondary. But of course, in ciders and wines, fruits undergo fermentation in the primary. That thought may help you in considering which you would prefer.
Only have experience with raspberries in a wheat. The fruit is pasteurized for 30" in a double-boiler then added to the 2ndary in a bag at the rate of 1# / G for one week. Fermentation re-ignites for a day or two then it's off to the bottling line a few days later.
No ill effects, but make sure to take things off the yeast cake first and add those additives in a secondary. They are not powerful enough to overcome a cake, but will do the trick on the secondary.
