Blueberry Ale Recipe Opinions

My sis wants a blueberry flavored beer at her wedding. I think I'm going to go for a pale beer for now. I had thought about doing something dark and malty, but the wedding will be in the summer time, so light and crisp is the way to go. The grainbill is a modified from a Blue Moon clone I've made.

Here's version 1 of the recipe:

50% 2 row pale
25% White Wheat Malt
13% Flaked Oats
6% Munich Malt
6% 10L

OG 1.051

I'm going to bitter to about 20 IBUs. Probably going to add some late Citra and/or Warrior hops for some tropical notes. May also dry-hop with Citra.

I'm going to use Nottingham or S-05 for a clean profile.

I'm planning on just adding some blueberry extract at bottling time. Adding little by little and testing before I transfer to the bottles.

Any opinions?

Thanks

See if you can find a clone of Wachussettes BlueBerry Ale. Its a straw colored easy drinking fruit beer. I am not a fan of fruit beers and actually liked this one.

Cool - I'll search, thanks.

Just to update - I'm not happy with the way that the blueberry extract flavored the beer. I'm going to try using frozen berries or puree next time. I'll also probably get rid of any late hop additions and stick to one 60 min addition and maybe some dry hopping with Citra or another tropical style aroma hop.

I also found that Seadog brewery posts their ingredients online, so I'm going to modify the grain bill to match their Blueberry Wheat Ale.

Your recipe looks pretty solid. I might add it to my list of potentials.

Leinenkugel's has their Sunset Wheat beer that's flavored with Blueberries, corriander, and possibly a hint of orange. Its a very polarizing beer, you love it or hate it. My wife loves it intensely, so I had to try a clone. I know exactly what you are talking about with fruit extract only. I like the aroma and taste of extract itself, but it needs some real fruit to back it up to taste authentic. I used 2 oz of extract and added 1 lb of frozen blueberries to the ferment as well. This turned out to be my wife's favorite brew to date. Blueberry flavor was noticeable but not overpowering. Very similar to the original except for yeast flavor (I used tart 3333 German wheat) and color (which was crystal pale pink vs hazy straw colored).

Recipe is for a 5.75 gallon batch that racked ~5 gallons to a keg. 1.044 OG, 1.005 FG, 5.3%:

4.5 lbs Red malted wheat
4.3 lbs Rahr 2 Row barley
1/4 lb Carapils
0.5 oz Crushed Corriander
1 orange peel with pith removed (zested)
1 lb frozen blueberries
2 oz blueberry extract

.6 oz Cluster (6.8% AAU) First Wort Hop
.2 oz Cluster 60 min
.2 oz Cluster 45 min (Est 17 IBU)

I threw the orange peel into the boil in the last 5 minutes. Corriander went into the boil with 1 minute left. I primaried for a week (most of the fermentation had completed) before adding crushed frozen blueberries. Primaried for another week and racked into keg. Added priming sugar and the 2 oz of blueberry extract.

Thanks for the frozen berry suggestion.

If you end up trying out my recipe, let me know how it goes. I ended up using Cascade and Citra hops and I split the batch into two parts - a no-blueberry flavor added and blueberry flavor added. I ended up liking the no-blueberry flavored beer better as it was basically a hoppy-ish blonde ale. Definitely won't use the Cascade for the next blueberry batch though - it clashed with the blueberry a bit much. I'm gonna use something much more mild. It looks like Seadog Brewery uses Willamette and Hallertauer for their blueberry ale, so I'll probably go that way.

Cool, I'll report back if I get this brewed.

I checked my notes for the 3 wheat beers I've done, a Cranberry Wheat, a Raspberry Wheat, and the Sunset Wheat (blueberry). I used Hersbrucker for the Cranberry, Hallertau for the Raspberry, and Cluster for the Sunset. I liked the Cluster the best, so that'll be my go-to hop for wheats moving forward. Hooray for experimentation

I did a 2nd batch with a simple grain bill, but put frozen blueberries into the secondary. The wort started fermenting again due to the blueberry sugars, and I was left with no blueberry taste. The beer has a funky yeast aroma as well, possibly from wild yeast that the blueberries may have introduced. The beer ended up with a purple color, which is interesting, but not beer-like.

I also made a 3rd batch. Simple grain bill, single 60 min. addition hop to 21 IBU. I kegged this batch and added a quart of blueberry juice. This way, the sugars in the juice won't re-ferment because it is refrigerated. I'm hoping this will work out better than the first two attempts...