Adding Fresh Fruit to Cider

I am a novice brewer and currently fermenting my first batch of beer and cider. I am interested in making some raspberry cider and would like to do it with fresh raspberries. I am only doing the cider in a 1 gallon glass jug to figure out how to make it taste decent before I commit to a 5 gallon batch.

Would the following steps be an acceptable way to add raspberry flavor to a cider?

1) Sterilize raspberries
2) Place raspberries at the bottom of secondary glass jug.
3) Pour primary fermented cider into secondary with raspberries.
4) Let secondary fermentation do its thing.
5) Bottle and make sure not to let raspberries get into bottles.

Thank you.

I've added a ton of different things to cider, and since it usually ferments out to a decent alcohol level, you might want to try adding some raspberries fresh without any sanitation efforts. The alcohol present would probably limit wild yeasts somewhat. A little sour twang would usually be desired anyways.

I think you have a good plan here, but an additional opinion - I personally age cider for 1-2 months in primary, secondary only if I'm going to bulk age for 3-4 months before kegging.

If you are planning on kegging or bottling in less time, I don't feel like you would have to secondary at all, you might just add them on top if you have room.

When siphoning or bottling to a keg, I like an auto siphon with some cut layers of paint strainer rubber banded to the end of the siphon. I do this for kegging dry hopped beers too, and combined with cold crashing I'm able to get brilliantly clear finished products.

Would love to hear how it goes! I have a 2.5 gal glass carboy and a 2.5 gal corny that I use just for test batches that involve expensive additions... right now I have a Cider that was dry hopped with Cascade - yum!

I'm able to locate the 2.5 gallon carboys for about $15 at Whole Foods (comes as a water jug, Mountain Spring I think is the name)

Good luck!

I've done raspberries in a 3 gallon batch. I'd recommend frozen raspberries so you can thaw them, refreeze and crush them in the bag and dump that pulp into the carboy. I let it sit for about 2 weeks until the pulp lost its red color and the cider had a dark red color. After it carbed up it had a really good flavor. A bit bitter at first, but after a week it was delicious, although I cant contribute that to aging for sure.