[Justin Stinn]

Hello all!  This weekend I am planning to add fruit puree to a brew I have fermenting. How have/would you do this?

A. Add fruit to fermenter, fill with starsan, purge the starsan out of the fermenter, then pressure transfer to the fermenter? Will the starsan affect the fruit?

B. Fill the fermenter with starsan, purge it out with co2, and then open it and add the fruit. Then maybe pressurize it and burp it a few times, then pressure transfer to the fermenter?

C. Any other method you can think of that may work better?

Thanks for any input you guys have!

[ynotbrusum]

B seems pretty reasonable to me.  Another approach could be to add to a purged fermenter (keg) with some CO2  going into the in post at a couple psi to try to further reduce O2 ingress.  Cheers!

[goose]

B seems pretty reasonable to me.  Another approach could be to add to a purged fermenter (keg) with some CO2  going into the in post at a couple psi to try to further reduce O2 ingress.  Cheers!

+1.  I am a bit leery of soaking the fruit in StarSan or any other sanitizing agent.  One thing I would make sure of is that the beer is done and nearly done fermenting so the alcohol content sanitizes the fruit when combining it with the beer.

Another way that is more effective is to puree the fruit and then heat it to something like 180 degrees to pasteurize it before adding it to the beer, if you are using fresh fruit (I jsut looked and the temperature needs to be at least 161 degrees for pasteruization).  If you use the canned puree, you can avoid this step since the puree is already pasteurized when they can it.

[ynotbrusum]

Hey Goose:  I think the OP was adding pureed fruit, but maybe that was optional...whole fruit or chunked fruit would require bagging in my world, for what it is worth.

[Andy Farke]

This is a timely topic, because I just added fruit to a kettle soured Belgian wit (my "Raspberry Belgian")...I made a raspberry puree from whole fresh raspberries by smashing them up in a small kettle, and pasteurized this a double boiler at ~160 degrees for 15 minutes (temperature was between 150 and 170). I then chilled the puree in an ice bath, and added it directly into the fermenter. For this particular recipe, I add the fruit on Day 4 of active fermentation, so I'm not terribly worried about oxidation or other ill effects from opening up the fermenter to add the puree.

[erockrph]

It would take some advance planning, but the best way to handle this is probably to add the fruit to your secondary fermenter when you start the initial fermentation, then use the CO2 produced from your primary fermentation to purge the secondary. After that you can pressure transfer onto your fruit in your purged secondary.

[goose]

Hey Goose:  I think the OP was adding pureed fruit, but maybe that was optional...whole fruit or chunked fruit would require bagging in my world, for what it is worth.

Yeah, I just read the OP and saw that the fruit wqas pureed.  Although, if he pureed nthe fruit himself, then pasteruization would probably be a good idea.  We are on the same page here! 

[chinaski]

Why not keep it simple and assume that the sugars in the fruit will ferment some and consume the oxygen?  I'd sanitize a secondary vessel, add the fruit, and rack the beer onto it.  Let it secondary long enough to initiate a secondary fermentation on the fruit.