Secondary thoughts and advice

[Ajdpilot]

Hi all,
So I'm starting to think about my next brew and as I always seem to do, I try to up my game and try a new step each time I do a brew. This time, it will be a strawberry beer and brewing with fruit.

I'd like to know peoples thoughts, reasons and experience in relation to the secondary when adding the fruit.
Specifically, how best to transfer for secondary (might as well discuss transferring to keg here also).

I have an Ss brewtech 7 gallon fermenter, not the all singing all dancing one, but it does have a tap above the trub layer (note - not a trub drain). So my options for transfer would be either siphon or gravity transfer via tap. I'm also open to new ideas.
I tend to keg in cornys so also have access to Co2, and relevant hoses/connectors, if I could maybe somehow utilises those potentially.

My main concerns are oxidation during transfers.
Am I better leaving it on the trub and adding the fruit to the primary (after initial fermentation) for a week or am I better using one of the 2 above mentioned transfer methods to transfer onto the fruit or another method?
Thoughts?

Also is it worth using a Campden tablet after transfer to reduce oxygen?
My thoughts with this are mainly concerned with the chemicals left behind after using the tablets. I'll already be using half a tab for water treatment pre mash, and 1 tablet to treat the fruit for 24 hours prior to addition to the beer, so do I really want to be adding any more?
If so just for the secondary or for kegging also?

Really interested to know peoples thoughts on all this.
Thanks for your input,
Happy brewing!
Andy

 

[An Ankoù]

I shouldn't worry overmuch about the chemicals left behind from using campden tablets. The half a tablet used to remove chlorine will turn into ordinary salt with perhaps a bit of residual sodium sulphate and carbonate. Later additions will give you a tad of -sulphite which will either evaporate, or if sealed in will help preserve your been, particularly from oxidation. Go to the supermaket and try to find a single bottle of wine, at any price, that doesn't contain sulphites. Just don't overdo it.
On the subject of fruit beers, maybe you can avoid the mistakes I made:
My son asked me to make him some fruit beers so I knocked up a batch of very lightly hopped Belgian wit to an abv of about 4% and then divided it into gallon demijohns. I had already done a bit of research onto Fruhli and saw that they used a similar base beer with strawberry purée. I bought two 220g jars of coulis de fraise (strawberry), coulis de cassis (blackberry) and coulis de framboise (raspberry) at about 2.5 euros each, so not cheap and added the two jars to each of three of the gallons of beer.
Coulis contains 75% of puréed fruit, 25% cane sugar and nothing else, not even preservatives.
The results were underwhelming to say the least, and the strawberry was the worst. In retrospect, I think I should have added at least three times as much purée to each lot, at least! That would work out at 15 euros per gallon, just for the fruit. The blackcurrent was pleasant, but probably needed twice as much purée.
The lesson here, then, is don't skimp on the fruit. Either buy it fresh when it's cheap, and make your own purée or buy it ready made on Amazon, where, I seem to recall the smallest packs of strawberry purée were too large for my single gallon experiments.

I guess that's why we call them experiments. because some of them fail!

Another thought, if you use a clean and reasonable flocculating yeast then you could add the fruit directly to the primary when fermentation draws to an end. You're going to need to rack the beer off the fruit pulp anyway so you don't really want to do a second racking before bottling.

 

[Ajdpilot]

Thanks for the information.
I'll take that on board.
Might consider the tablets post transfer for secondary and possibly again for kegging if you think its alright. See how it turns out.

In terms of the fruit, everything I've read says about using fresh fruit is the best for flavour and colour but need to sort the yeast with campdens pre addition.
I was thinking of using 3.5kg for a 23 litre batch (using a rough recipe) see how it turns out.
Just trying to do everything I can to maximise its potential for success

 

[An Ankoù]

Thanks for the information.
I'll take that on board.
Might consider the tablets post transfer for secondary and possibly again for kegging if you think its alright. See how it turns out.

In terms of the fruit, everything I've read says about using fresh fruit is the best for flavour and colour but need to sort the yeast with campdens pre addition.
I was thinking of using 3.5kg for a 23 litre batch (using a rough recipe) see how it turns out.
Just trying to do everything I can to maximise its potential for success

Just remember that the sulphur dioxide from the campdens will bleach your fruit. I used to pick fresh raspberries from my allotment and drop them in a bowl of dilute sodium metabisulphite solution (same stuff) to kill off most of the surface yeasts before rinsing them again and adding them to my beer to make a raspberry beer. The raspberries would lose their colour, but this came back over subsequent days as fermentation restarted and the SO2 was driven off.

 

[Ajdpilot]

Thanks, I didn't know that one.

Would there still be much fermentation going on in a secondary anyway? My understanding was the secondary was more to allow particles in suspension to drop out and in this case with the fruit to allow the beer to absorb the flavours and colour. I suppose adding the fruit would be adding further sugars for the yeast, which would suggest adding a campden tablet to the beer after siphoning to secondary would be a bad idea as it would halt any further fermentation activity.

 

[An Ankoù]

Thanks, I didn't know that one.

Would there still be much fermentation going on in a secondary anyway? My understanding was the secondary was more to allow particles in suspension to drop out and in this case with the fruit to allow the beer to absorb the flavours and colour. I suppose adding the fruit would be adding further sugars for the yeast, which would suggest adding a campden tablet to the beer after siphoning to secondary would be a bad idea as it would halt any further fermentation activity.

I presume you're going to wait until the beer has nearly finished before adding the fruit, in which case you're effectively adding a massive dose of fermentable sugar (from the fruit) which will restart fermentation. You should also allow for this when estimating your final abv.
Indeed. Just use a campden solution wash to suppress wild yeasts in the fruit before adding to the beer.

 

[Ajdpilot]

The recipe I have says to wait until it has completely finished the primary and add the fruit in the secondary.
This is where it starts getting out of my knowledge and experience. I've only ever done secondaries purely to help clear the beer. I've also only ever done ales and on the odd time I've bottled I've calculated the sugars to add for priming, but mostly I've kegged and forced carbonated.

Any idea what sort of range the fruit will boost the abv?
How much fermentable sugars are even in the average strawberries anyway?

 

[An Ankoù]

The easiest way is to just google, "how much sugar in ..... ?"
Or. Don't worry about it. Just accept that the final beer is going to be about 20% (very very roughly) pokier than otherwise.