Sanitise yes/no and how?

[stz]

Hello HBT.
I've got a couple of lbs of whole sour cherries soaking in vodka ready to add to some beer. They were freeze died and sold as organic without any preservatives or added sugar which usually preserves dried fruit. I figure yes, infection risk, yes soak in vodka, but it is quite a lot of vodka for 2lb and it doesn't exactly scale very well. How would you sanitise? How long would you soak them for? Presumably they'll take a while to fully soak up the vodka. I suppose I could have poured over boiling water, but I'd dilute the beer further.

I've got some freeze dried fruit powders which were sold as 100% organic fruit with no preservatives or added sugar. Would you sanitise this? Again I imagine that they certainly contain some bacteria. When would you introduce it? Mash? Boil? Primary? Secondary? I intend to make a blueberry saison and a banana wheat and would like to think that the powder would be easier to use than the whole fruits and was thinking of dumping it into primary near the end of fermentation. The quantities would be lower, maybe make a slurry with boiling water before adding?

I've got some loose leaf tea which I've been recommended to add as is. My gut instinct would say sanitise again with vodka, or boiling water, but the water would pull tannins out of the tea. Hmm. Blanch with boiling water then discard the water before adding the tea?

 

[elburrogrande]

I hardly sanitize anything but fruit doesn't sit on beer long and I drink it fast. In the past when I wanted to age on fruit for longer periods of time I would heat the fruit to 160 degrees for 10 minutes or so. for a blueberry saison Id recommend using canned blueberries just freeze thaw and refreeze a couple times and pour right in. I also just brewed a blueberry milkshake IPA and used 6lbs of frozen blueberries unsanitized straight in to a fermenter using a mesh bag.

 

[stz]

I would use canned blueberries, but I think I'll struggle to get them easily here and without considerable amounts of added sugar. The freeze dried fruit powder is quite economical and contains only the natural fruit. I'm thinking I'll make a slurry with some boiling water before adding it as is. I might test a little in a jar to see if it settles out of suspension. It is a similar consistency to broken up t90's.