Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?

[SeanGAR]

Originally Posted by kenstogie

Again I am no expert but am trying to understand. So the canned fruit wouldn't add germs or bacteria and ruin the beer?

Canned fruit is thermally processed in the can to kill anything that could spoil it. It is not as clean as commercially processed green beans, say, because you don't need as long/hot a process because the fruits has low pH, but you still don't need to worry about bacteria or wild yeast in the canned fruit products.

I just clean off the top with soap and water, rinse, open, and pour in.

The processing of the canned fruit can be done 2 ways. One would be to heat up the fruit to 83C or so, can it, seal it, then invert the cans. We call this hot fill. The heat from the hot fruit will kill microorganisms in the can.

The second would be to fill the cans cold, then after heat them so the internal temperature reaches 83 or so. This is similar to the Pasteurization process that they use for beer.

In either case, the fruit is clean enough to use directly even though it has not received a 12D commercial sterilization process.