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When to add the fruit depends on the style of beer and what the brewer is going for. Generally, fruit is added after a sour or mixed fermentation beer has finished aging and maturing. This preserves the fruit character more than other methods. For example, a mixed fermentation sour beer might take 6-12 months for the ''Brettanomyces'' character to develop fully. After this maturation, the fruit should be added, and then aged for another 1-2 months. For a kettle sour, the same rule applies, but the time frame is generally much shorter. Since kettle sours generally mature much faster than mixed fermentation beers, fruit can be added much sooner. For example if the kettle sour is done fermenting after two weeks, fruit can be added at that time.
Another method would be to add the fruit earlier on during the aging process. This can help extract more from fruit skins or seeds, but some of the more delicate aromas and flavors of the fruit could age out of the beer in that time. For example, Belgian kriek style beers are sometimes aged on cherries for ~6 -12 months, which is believed to be the time required to fully extract character from the cherries and pits<ref name="raf_cherries" />.
A combination of adding fruit earlier on in the fermentation, and then again after the beer has matured is another technique that brewers have used.