Apricot Saison Help

[DeadFall]

I'm brewing tomorrow and am working up a recipe. I have a smack pack of french saison yeast, 6kg of pilsner malt. I was planning on adding 500g of flaked wheat I have left and a bit of curocao orange too. I have also bought 500g of dried apricots. How would I use them boil, secondary, both? Is it enough? I was thinking a couple of hundred grams shredded at about 10m then the rest in a carbouy at 6 weeks or so for a secondary.

[Mr. Dripping]

I've just done a rhubarb saison and I put the fruit in to the fermenter after the initial vigour of fermentation had subsided.
The rhubarb had been blanched for 1 minute and then frozen....I just put the frozen block in without further treatment.
I was a little worried about infection, but everything was fine.
I think it would be advisable to either heat treat the fruit or mash it up and add some campden to help prevent any chance of infection.

[Rick_UK]

I made a saison with grapefruit and corriander a couple of weeks ago and added them for the last 10 mins of the boil but I made sure the grapefruit slices were also transferred to the FV.

Just sampling a bottle as I type and it tastes great!

Rick

[Mr. Dripping]

Did the fruit come through Rick?
I added mine to the FV to try and retain flavour.
Your combo sounds ace btw, I would never have considered grapefruit tbh, but it makes sense considering the dryness of the saison style

[Rick_UK]

Yeah it's spot on just the right amount of grapefruityness without it being too much. I just chopped up a whole grapefruit - obviously the oils in the zest will provide more zing. The corriander is quite subtle but definitely there - I used 50g - I think the spicy yeast flavours mask it slightly.

Rhubarb sounds good though - think i'll try this in my next one, I love rhubarb!

[Patterd Ale]

Be aware, dried fruit has the highest levels of sulphites commonly found in our food and drinks. If it bothers you of course!

[DeadFall]

I brewed this up yesterday.

6kg pilsner
500g flaked wheat

2 Hour mash at 67.5. beersmith suggested 68.5 but I was struggling with room, my equipment profile is off on the mash tun heat loss so I needed quite a lot of water to get it to 67.5.
I got just over 30L of wort at 1054.

60 Minute boil
20g citra added when the wort was around 80c pre-boil
10g citra at 20 mins
35g thinly sliced root ginger (spur of the moment, all I had), 100g chopped dried apricot (soaked in boiling water for 10 mins to get rid of some of the preservatives), 10g curcoa orange peel (just to use it up really), 50g crushed coriander seed all at 5 min

Smells amazing very fruity with a lovely hint of ginger. Got about 26L at 1063, there wasn't enough hops to get a decent filter bed so I have a lot of break sitting in the FV which will take this down a bit. In retrospect I should have used a lower alpha hop for bittering.

Pitched french saison liquid wyeast. The yeast pack was a bit too old and after four hours it wasn't fully swollen so it's only just formed a krausen 24 hours after pitching.

In a week I'll soak the rest of the apricots in boiling water and add them and the beer to a carbouy for secondary fermenting for 6 weeks before bottling. How would I prime this? Will there be enough yeast left or will I need to add some for priming?