Proper Application Of Fruit Into Secondary

[facter]

I have when doing previous fruit beers, always added fruit into the primary and jsut fermented the pulp in a mesh bag - however, I decided that I'd see what kind of results I would get by placing fruit into the secondary this time instead.

There seem to be many different ways of doing this - what do you believe is the most effective application of adding fruit to the secondary? What is the best way to sterilise the fruit? I dont want to boil as it will probably cause a pectin haze - I usually jsut steep it for about 10/20 minutes in hot water then add the entire thing to the beer - but, I just want to add the fruit itself, not the juice created - dont want to water down the beer at all... by steeping it, wont it leech out all the flavours into the water? I do know,th at using frozen fruit is better sometimes - I am aiming at getting frozen berries for my wheat beer...

I'm also a little wary of using fruit in secondary, as I use plastic jerry's for my secondary containers, and use the "loosen the cap" method instead of airlocking it. How much will it additionally ferment out?


Lots of questions - there jsut seems to be a lot of different ways to do this, and I want to find the best method for my brew