Best flavor hop for a blueberry wheat?

Just starting to heat my strike water & I'm having second thoughts about what flavor hop to add to my blueberry wheat.

It's a 1.045 beer, 50% 2 row/50% wheat malt.

Bittering hops up to ~20IBU, no aroma hop addition. I want to add a 15 minute flavor addition, probably just .5 oz. The hop varieties I have are:

Leaf: Columbus, Galena, Willamette
Pellets: Northern Brewer, Mt. Hood, Sterling, Chinook, & Palisades

Gallon of blueberries will be added in secondary. What flavor hop should I use & why?

Others may differ, but why add flavor hops? The hops character of a wheat should be low, and if the blueberries are the star of the show, leave it at 20IBU. That's smack in the middle of the American Wheat BJCP style guide.

Just my $0.02

I would leave the hops to a minimum also. Just enough to balance the sweetness out a bit. Let the blueberries shime through!

r2eng said:

Others may differ, but why add flavor hops? The hops character of a wheat should be low, and if the blueberries are the star of the show, leave it at 20IBU. That's smack in the middle of the American Wheat BJCP style guide.

Just my $0.02

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+1. Just stick to the 60 min addition and leave everything else to the blueberry.

The flavor of hops might detract from the flavor of the beer and the blueberries. Wheats typically don't have flavor additions (although I have made a really hoppy wheat), and if it's a fruit beer, you really don't want any hop flavor at all.

Chello said:

+1. Just stick to the 60 min addition and leave everything else to the blueberry.

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+1. The blueberry will be subtle. I have read many woeful reviews of blueberry beers that had very little blueberry taste. Good Luck.

(I have one all ready to go based on blueberry puree; can't wait; maybe next wkend; I'm concentrating on getting a bready malty sweet blueberry wheat beer and trying like hell not to overdo the hops; I know from past experience I can add more hops to the secondary by boiling some with a bit of water, but can't go the other way!).

Blueberry is a fragile flavor, +1 on no flavor OR aroma hops. If you must, use Sterling. It's herbal and spicy, should work well with the blueberry. But just a 1/2 ounce or so.

Been meaning to try blueberry again. Used in once before in a beer that went bad, but I don't think it was the berries. Wheat seems to be the best vehicle for fruit flavor, IMHO. I never really like barley-based fruit beers, and there's always a few pilsner-blueberry abominations floating around in the middle of summer.

Coming to this party wayyy late, but I just happened to brew a wheat batch with anticipation of racking onto 3# of blueberry puree.

During a full-boil w/7 lbs wheat extract, I used .5 oz Northern Brewer (9.6%) at 60 minutes and .5 oz at 5 minutes. I'm looking at right around 22 IBUs (per Beer Recipator).

This was for the SWMBO, who fell in love with Sebago Brewery's (Portland, ME) Blueberry Wheat. Coinciding with many on here, I don't think a fruit/wheat beer, let alone blueberry, should be overly bitter - yet this one was nice and crisp - slightly bitter, without an overpowering blueberry flavor - served with about 10-15 blueberries at the bottom of a pint.

I'm approaching the close of my primary fermentation and I'll probably rack onto the 3# of blueberry puree this coming Sunday - leaving it for about 12-14 more days before kegging. I'll have to repost with the results shortly thereafter.