Fruit Longevity in Primary

[mmurray]

I brewed a 10 gallon batch of Berliner Weisse this weekend. Seeing as how I have to split my batch into 2 carboys I figured I would do something different.


On the left I added 1.5lbs of cherries (I blanched them with 180F water to sanitize before adding to carboy) and on the right was straight Berliner.

My question is how long can I keep the beer on the cherries without concern? My initial plan was to transfer to secondary in 6 months and taste, but I started to wonder if I would do more harm than good with that time span. Would I have any flavor concerns with the Cherries being in that long? Should I worry about them breaking down and causing off flavors with that timeline?

My OG on the Berliner was 1.032 and the OG of the carboy with the Cherries added was 1.042.

Cheers!

Mark

[brewinhard]

I think you would be just fine leaving the beer on the fruit for 6 mos. although for a berliner 3 mos would probably be more than sufficient. Were the cherries pitted before adding them?

[imahokie]

Not that this helps at all (now) but typically people do the fruit after primary, when racking into secondary - I'm sure there's good technical terminology and jargon. I've just never heard someone recomend to do your primary fermentation on top of fruit additions.

My theory is that I think the yeast might be a bit confused as to which sugars it should eat...

[spiderwrangler]

My theory is that I think the yeast might be a bit confused as to which sugars it should eat...

I think it's more a concern that the vigorous ferment will blow off lots of the fruit character. Yeast should handle the sugars JUST FINE.

[mmurray]

I think you would be just fine leaving the beer on the fruit for 6 mos. although for a berliner 3 mos would probably be more than sufficient. Were the cherries pitted before adding them?

Thanks... I'll check it at 3 months and see. The Cherries were pitted.

And as far as Fruit in the primary, I've done that a few times before and not had a problem with the flavor. I've just never left them for as long as I am planning to this time, usually between 2 and 6 weeks.