blackberry wheat

well ,i finally got to brew up yesterday,i did the blackberry wheat and WOW,if it tastes anything like it smells,its goning to be heavan on earth,just hope i did everything ust right.i used a hefe recipe and subbed the yeast it called for with a california liquid ,wlpoo1,it is supposed to be a netrual yeast to let the blackberry flavor come through ,i started at 1.042,should finish around 1.012 give or take ,i put it in the fermentor last night at 730pm ,this morning at 830am it kicked off ,its been going good so far,it is a pretty beer i can say that .never really seen a purple beer before ,lol ,its ok with me ,,happy brewing yall ,any questions feel free to ask,your beer buddy bull.

Let me know how it turns out, Bull. I want to do a fruit beer one of these days and I dont' know whether to do "real" fruit or do extract before bottling like some suggest.

Wow, sounds awesome! Let us know how it tastes!

I did a blackberry wheat beer about a month ago and it turned out AMAZING. Lots of blackberry aroma and a super smooth taste to it. Best beer I have brewed so far.

Did you use real berries or flavor extract?

I would also like to know the recipe. I was going to ALABREW this week to get a Black Berry Wheat kit, would you mind telling how you did it ?

Yummm....Blackberry. I have done quite a few fruit beers as they are something the wife likes. We just kicked a Red Raspberry keg yesterday. Did you put the fruit in the primary? I would suggest putting it in the secondary to keep the fruit flavor alive. I am not a big fan of extracts, the extract flavor has an off flavor to me. I made a cherry Hefe with 5 pounds of cherries (frozen then cut and added to secondary) and it was great. Hope it turns out good, if you do add some blackberries to the secondary, freeze them first to break the juice pockets in the berries. I let the fruit warm up a little before I rack the beer on top of the fruit. Another little trick I learned is to suck up a little bit of yeast off the bottom when you transfer to let the fruit ferment out a little in the secondary. Enjoy.

I'd like to do a Blackberry wheat for my next brew. What's your recipe?

Inquiring minds want to know!

well,to answer the first question ,we had a really good blackberry season where i live and i did use fresh frozen,i know for a fact anything fresh or fresh frozen is better than extract.

i went ahead and put it in the boil,boiled one hour ,then paniced thinking ijust wasted those berries ,ill never be able to taste them in the finished product ,but i think the berries are strong enough ,itll be ok ,the beer is almost finished fermenting ,and it smells GOOOOOOOOOOD,so im going to rack it over to the secondary,for a couple of weeks and let itsettle out ,before bottling ,will keep yall posted ,

hey poppy email me and ill tell ya how i did the recipe ,[email protected]

i will try the berries in the seconary next batch since i have a small supply left of the black berries ,i didnt know if i could do that ,cause i didnt blanch them when i put them in the vacum bags,ya think i need to blanch them first?

and last but not least ,thanks to a really nice person melana,i got enough info to try it ,and glad i did ,thanks a bunch you are a sweetheart ,muahh

In case anyone is curious, I used a modified version of the StoutBilly's recipe that can be found on www.stoutbillys.com, under "Blackberry Wheat"

I used a pound of the carapils for the grains, 5 oz of dextrose for priming, and 3 one gallon freezer bags of berries that I thawed, blended, and dissolved a Campden tablet into. After a day of soaking with the campden tablet, racked the beer onto the fruit in the secondary.

The aroma's were AMAZING!. If anyone is a fan of Long Trail Blackbeary Wheat, this one will blow it away.

bull said:

hey poppy email me and ill tell ya how i did the recipe ,[email protected]

Click to expand...

Emailed you yesterday.

I tried a Black Berry Wheat last Weds night.

Basically, I read all the BBW recipes I could find and then tried to simplify the extract recipes into something simple and easy.

Here's what I came up with.

Ingredients:
6 gallons spring water
5 # bag Spray Wheat Extract
1 4oz Bottle of Black Berry Beer Flavoring
1 tblsp McCormicks Black Beery Extract
1oz Hop pellets
7.5g WL320 Dry Yeast


Put the spring water in the fridge 48 hours ahead of time to get nice and cold. On brew day, I put one and a half gallons of the spring water in the brew pot along with the hops and turned on the heat. Then I rehydrated the yeast in a teacup of warm tap-water. After about 30 minutes the water was nearing a boil, so I took out the hop back, took the pot off the heat and added the Spray Wheat Extract*

Put it back on the heat, and poured 4 gallons of cold spring water into the brew bucket while the brew pot got back to a boil. Added 2 oz of the Black Beery Beer Flavoring and 1 tblspoon of Black Berry Extract.

Poured the whole hot brew pot over into the brewbucket which was already to go with the cold spring water. Gave it a quick stir then took a minute to wash the brew pot and sanitize the top of the brew bucket and airlock. 5 minutes later checked the temp and it was 78, so I pitched the yeast in the teacup and measured the OG 1055. Sealed the brewbucket up and stuck in the airlock.

Now luckily for me I keep my fermenters in the bathtub in the guest bathroom - the next night when I got home to check on the brew, the top of the airlock was overflown and there was a foam of yeast that smelled like Black Berry Muffins baking all over the brewbucket and in the tub. So I got some clorox wipes and cleaned it off and put in a new clean airlock.

I understand from what I've read here that Wheat Beers don't take as long to make in comparison to other beers, so I'm anticipating 10-14 days in the primary and then straight to some 1 liter blue glass swingtop bottles that I purchased for this project.

Just judging by the wonderful Blackberry muffin smell of the mess in my bathtub, I would guess this is going to be a great beer, and I'm looking forward to having some. Thanks for the inspiration and ideas.

* by the way, I discovered while/after cooking that I'm allergic to the Wheat Spray Extract, since I got a horrible case of flushed face and hives - I sure hope I can drink the beer, if I can't I'm going to be really disappointed.

Hey Bull, I just started drinking on my second batch of this beer. Did an all grain this time though. 4.6# Pilsener, 5.6# Wheat - Probably should have sparged once more so that I had more in the kettle to boil, after a 90 minute boil and chill I had the target gravity spot on 1.050 at 55F but I only had a bit over 4 gallons of wort Didn't have the entire 5 gallons I expected, but the gravity was right exactly where I wanted to start so I decided to just go with it.

I decided to pitch the yeast cold and let it warm up as it fermented - it started slowly - nothing for the first 12 hours, but once it got going I think it finished up in about 4 days. Pitched yeast Sunday night and bottled some Thursday evening.

I bottled 2 liters of just plain wheat beer and then split the rest in half and did 1/2 blackberry and 1/2 peach wheat. Also I used real fruit instead of fruit flavoring / extract and it made a world of difference.

The blackberry ended up much better this year, for one thing I did all grain instead of extract but more importantly I think I'm learning to control the fermentation temperature better. This time most of the fermentation occured in the low to mid 60s, and by the time it got up to the 70s it was done. Ended up with some bananna and clove smells, but its more subtle than overwhelming this time. Also the fresh blackberries were great - beer ended up with that cloudy yeasty look you'd expect from a wheat but also a beautiful pastel purple color.

When it was all bottled I ended up with 3 six packs and one 22oz Bomber of Black Berry Wheat, 3 six packs of peach wheat, and 2 liters of just plain wheat - no fruit.