Adding Blueberries to fermenter

Hey all, I have a wheat beer in the fermenter, and the plan was to add a few pounds of blueberries to it after about a week.

I'm starting to second guess this idea because a friend just tried his strawberry blonde that he made by putting strawberry in the fermenter and he says it tastes like rotten boones farm.


Does anyone have experience adding blueberries directly to the fermenting bucket? The plan was to keep them in a week, then transfer the beer to a better bottle to sit for a few days then bottle.

I hope you get some good suggestions because I've been thinking about the same thing.

Yes, freeze them first because it helps break down the cell walls. Add them after primary fermentation is complete and I'd do a minimum of 1 pound per gallon.

You need to crush your fruit into puree, boil them in a bit of water to sanatize, cool down the puree/water mix to about 70F, put the fruit/water mixture into a secondary fermenter, and rack your wort on top of the puree mix. You'll then need to let that sit for an additional 2-3 weeks to ferment the sugars in the fruit, then proceed with bottling/kegging as normal.

Two pounds of fruit is going to be REAL subtle in a 5 gallon batch. The rule ot thumb if you really want the fruit to show up in the beer is about SIX POUNDS per 5 gallons.

Let me know if you have any more questions.

Thanks for the great info!

I may go get more blueberry, that's good to know. Would you recommend the boiling even if the fruit I'm using is the frozen Dole blueberries?

Whatever you do, don't heat the blueberries. Years ago I tried to make a blueberry mead. I made the mistake of adding several pounds of crushed blueberries to my honey wort that was way too hot. I ended up with a smooth gelatinized blueberry concoction that had the mouthfeel of a spicy jellied blueberry loogey.

OK, I was thinking of doing this, too...and now I'm confused. One person says freeze the blueberries, one person says boil them, and one person says whatever you do don't heat the things....

Um...is it possible there is no inconsistency and I'm just reading it wrong? Or is it that people have different approaches?

I was thinking boiling made sense (then cooling before adding to secondary, then racking on top of it).

Help?

Freeze them.
Thaw them.
Puree them.
Boil them.
Cool them.
Rack on top of them.
That is what i've gotten from trolling HBT! And ALWAYS remember to rdwhahb!

when i made my blueberry wit i froze ther berries, thawed, pressed, threw into secondary(actuallyracked onto em) turned out fine. Freezing should do just fine as fare as making all sanitary. If you have a foodsaver type system these work awesome. make bags a bit longer than needed(6" or so) put berries in vacuum till berries are just starting to be pressed, then freeze. when you pull outa freezer, thaw then take a rolling pin to the bag.

Blueberries are very high in pectin and fairly high in acid. When heated, acid and pectin will start to interact and cause jelling. I used fresh blueberries, skins and all and crushed them by hand before pitching into my wort. I used way too many blueberries and I think that may have contributed to the end result. Pectic enzyme could be used to counteract this result as well as prevent pectic haze.

Or you can buy the blueberry puree from a LHBS...I just added 6# of sweet cherry puree to my Black Forest Stout...I bought the cans already sterile and designed for our use.

I dunno...something about adding the actual fruit is kind of appealing. Seems more fun. Silly me. I'm still confused, though. But I'm just gonna try it (freeze, thaw, boil, cool, dump into secondary) and see what happens.

I tend to prefer fresh fruit flavor when I make a fruit beer so I use the freeze and no cook approach. I think you lose a lot of that fresh character when you boil the fruit, so that's why I recommend only freezing them to break down the cell walls. That said, in Radical Brewing by Randy Mosher he indicates that fresh blueberry flavor is delicate and often lost in a beer and that cooking blueberries may actually enhance their flavor. So this may be a case where you're better off cooking them rather than using raw.

BrewScout said:

Freeze them.
Thaw them.
Puree them.
Boil them.
Cool them.
Rack on top of them.
That is what i've gotten from trolling HBT! And ALWAYS remember to rdwhahb!

Click to expand...

Nail on the Head! You rock, man. :rockin:

There are a lot of opinions here and a lot more people who just repeat what they have heard.

If your beer has already fermented, the chance of infection goes way down. Heating the blueberries can activate the pectin in the berries and make a gooey mess. This is pretty much how you make jam. You can google pectin amount for different fruits to see which ones are easier to heat and which aren't but I sure as hell wouldn't boil those guys.

If you are really worried about infection, there are two ways to handle it. First you could pasteurize the berries. This is really annoying and time consuming but totally possible. Second, you could make an extract with vodka which will simultaneously kill off most of the bugs.

Personally, I just add the fruit to the secondary. Also, freezing the fruit will puncture the fruit (via ice crystal formation) making it easier to release its wonderful flavor into the beer. Making a puree will also do this as will dicing or any other mutilation of the fruit. Its really just a matter of degree.

As to your friends skanky boones farm strawberry wheat, that's probably because making a fruit beer is a little more complicated than just throwing some fruit in the fermenter. The chemicals that give a fruit its flavor are found in different magnitudes in different fruits. Some fruits have more subtle flavors than others, Strawberries and Blackberries for example. Where some fruits are much more potent, Apricots. Also, the amount of sugar in the fruit has to be taken into consideration because all that sugar is going to be turned into alcohol leaving a less sweet and lighter beer. On beers where I use fruit, I always mash at a higher temp and use less hops than beers with no fruit. Also, you will want to remove your flavor and aroma hop additions or at the very least make those decisions very very wisely.

Finally, I use the rule of thumb of 5 lbs of fruit for 5 gallons of beer for moderate flavor. Of course, that really depends on the fruit. So you see the conundrum, there's a lot of moving parts here and you really have to know your product. But that's what experimenting is all about. Good Luck with your brew.

Obligatory: RDWHAHB

Not to hijack, but the blueberry puree (can from LHBS) I used didn't mix completely with the beer when I racked on top of it. When I rack to my bottling bucket should I draw off the top until my bucket is full or should I stick the racking tube all the way to the bottom and let it mix a little as it fills the bottling bucket?

So being that blueberries are loaded with pectin and boiling makes them gel up in you. How would you go about sanitizing them to prevent unwanted critters from getting into your beer? I know that freezing fruit breaks down the cell walls and releases the natural flavor of the fruit, but does nothing whatsoever to the bacteria found on/in them. What is the solution for high pectin fruit?

BrewScout said:

So being that blueberries are loaded with pectin and boiling makes them gel up in you. How would you go about sanitizing them to prevent unwanted critters from getting into your beer? I know that freezing fruit breaks down the cell walls and releases the natural flavor of the fruit, but does nothing whatsoever to the bacteria found on/in them. What is the solution for high pectin fruit?

Click to expand...

Heating the blueberries to sanitize them is fine when you use appropriate amounts. You can also buy Pectinase. Pectinase is an enzyme that reduces the size of the pectin molecule and prevents gelling.

TarheelBrew13 gives a great explanation on pectin and it's results.

Another option to handle sanitation of fresh fruit is to use alcohol as an anti-septic. After thawing the frozen fruit you can combine them in a blender with vodka or another alcohol with minimal flavor profile, unless of coarse you want to add another flavor IE: Bourbon, Whiskey so on.

You will need to account for the added sugars and alcohol in your end product if you're worried about it.

But as many have already said, with so many different methods. Find one you're comfortable with and give it a try. Next time give another a try. I'm sure this won't be your one and only attempt at adding fruit to beer

Schlimly said:

TarheelBrew13 gives a great explanation on pectin and it's results.

Another option to handle sanitation of fresh fruit is to use alcohol as an anti-septic. After thawing the frozen fruit you can combine them in a blender with vodka or another alcohol with minimal flavor profile, unless of coarse you want to add another flavor IE: Bourbon, Whiskey so on.

You will need to account for the added sugars and alcohol in your end product if you're worried about it.

But as many have already said, with so many different methods. Find one you're comfortable with and give it a try. Next time give another a try. I'm sure this won't be your one and only attempt at adding fruit to beer

Click to expand...

Interesting idea about using alcohol to clean up the fruit. A couple of questions for anyone willing to have an opinion:

1. What kinds of booze would be good for this, that might have a flavor that would complement a blueberry wheat beer? I was thinking some kind of liqueur possibly, but don't know if the alcohol content would be high enough to do the job?

2. I wonder if, rather than soaking a 5 lb batch of blueberries in some kind of booze (eg, vodka), then dumping the whole thing into the secondary, if it might work to soak, say, 1 lb, for, say, a half hour, then strain the berries through a strainer, and re-use the same alcohol for another pound, and so on, and in the end not dumping the alcohol into the secondary, but just whatever amount of it stayed with the berries after straining?

Probably this is obvious to everyone else. But I'm kinda slow.

Thanks,

Mark

Just-a-Guy said:

I dunno...something about adding the actual fruit is kind of appealing. Seems more fun. Silly me. I'm still confused, though. But I'm just gonna try it (freeze, thaw, boil, cool, dump into secondary) and see what happens.

Click to expand...

I've tried 3 times to get the blueberry flavor into my beer. I bought blueberry extract from Midwest Supplies (L. D. Carlson brand) but found that to taste fake. The second time I used a pound of blueberries and a quart of blueberry juice and if the weather was just right and the stars aligned properly and you really paid attention you might get a hint of blueberry. Since that obviously wasn't enough blueberry I made a new batch and put in 6 pounds of blueberries into a 5 gallon batch, heating them to 160 F. for 10 minutes to pasteurize them, crushed them as much as I could and added them to the fermenter after 2 weeks so the ale was fermented out. I am now the proud owner of 50 bottles of blue colored beer with barely a hint of blueberry flavor. I QUIT!

RM-MN said:

I've tried 3 times to get the blueberry flavor into my beer. I bought blueberry extract from Midwest Supplies (L. D. Carlson brand) but found that to taste fake. The second time I used a pound of blueberries and a quart of blueberry juice and if the weather was just right and the stars aligned properly and you really paid attention you might get a hint of blueberry. Since that obviously wasn't enough blueberry I made a new batch and put in 6 pounds of blueberries into a 5 gallon batch, heating them to 160 F. for 10 minutes to pasteurize them, crushed them as much as I could and added them to the fermenter after 2 weeks so the ale was fermented out. I am now the proud owner of 50 bottles of blue colored beer with barely a hint of blueberry flavor. I QUIT!

Click to expand...

OK, I'm sorry, but that made me laugh out loud.

Wondering...did you rack out to a secondary for the blueberries? And how long did you leave it in the fermenter? Just curious.

I did rack to secondary on the second try but left it in the primary for the third try. I think it spent a week in there with the blueberries.

There seems to be quite a few newer brewers who want the blueberry flavor but it seems pretty hard to get.

I've heard of people supplementing their fruit with about an ounce of the extract flavoring per 5 gallons. 6 lbs fruit, 1 oz extract. Wanna go for round 4?

Do we really not know how the breweries in Maine do this? Atlantic brewing co may answer an email or something. I'll try...

What about just buying frozen berries and putting them directly in the secondary and racking on top of the frozen berries?

Another brewer suggested that not all extracts were the same and he recommended Bickford Flavoring but I think someone else will have to travel that road. I'm having too much fun with my other concoctions. I have so many grains to try and hops and yeasts and I'm already 60 year old, I just can't waste time on such a long shot. I can buy the blueberry ale instead of making it myself.

I'm starting the process tonight. I picked up a wheat kit on the way home at the LHBS. Has only LME. I bought 3 lbs of wheat DME (Muntons) as well. Also bought 1 lb Weyermann Light Wheat Malt.

I was thinking I'd steep about half the Weyermann in a couple gallons of water, then add about 1 1/2 lbs of the DME, boil for about 30 mins, then add the LME, boil for another 2o mins, then move to the FV and top up, toss the yeast. Wait 2-3 weeks, then move to secondary with the blueberries (freeze, thaw, smash, pasturize, toss into the secondary, rack on top). Then leave for 10-14 days.

Thoughts?

Here's my Black Forest Stout fermenting in secondary on 6Lbs of Cherry puree

I have added fruit to numerous batches of beer and mead.

If the fruit is fresh I freeze it, defrost it, pulverize / puree it and add it to the secondary - rack beer on top. As long as you are adding to your secondary the existing alcohol is enough to prevent anything bad happening.

Another suggestion if you are concerned use the Oregon canned fruit puree. Just dump it in the secondary and rack.

I have never had a problem using the above methods.

nsrooen said:

I have added fruit to numerous batches of beer and mead.

If the fruit is fresh I freeze it, defrost it, pulverize / puree it and add it to the secondary - rack beer on top. As long as you are adding to your secondary the existing alcohol is enough to prevent anything bad happening.

Another suggestion if you are concerned use the Oregon canned fruit puree. Just dump it in the secondary and rack.

I have never had a problem using the above methods.

Click to expand...

How long do you typically leave the brew in secondary on the fruit? I've heard anything from a week to months.

I am going to hijack this thread because I am thinking of something similar but with strawberries. My only question pertaining to strawberries is what about all those little seeds on them, will the eventually settle to the bottom of the secondary and then just rack to the bottling bucket leaving seeds behind? And I am interested in the answer to MrSpiffy's question above.

MrSpiffy said:

How long do you typically leave the brew in secondary on the fruit? I've heard anything from a week to months.

Click to expand...

You want to leave it until it is done fermenting. No particular timeline on that as yeast do what they do when they do it but as a general rule it only takes then a short amount of time to chow through those sugars. I'd guess maybe 4 days.

BrewScout said:

........ I know that freezing fruit breaks down the cell walls and releases the natural flavor of the fruit, but does nothing whatsoever to the bacteria found on/in them.........

Click to expand...

Who told you this?

Seems pretty logical to me, chicken isn't sterilized by freezing either. There probably is some cell kill with the cold, but not enough to sterilize.

O.K, "nothing whatsoever" is a little strong. But there are plenty of bacteria that can survive a deep freeze. Although there are no nasties that can survive in beer that can harm you. They sure can make your beer undrinkable. It's called google. It's free, and it's not very difficult to use.

Apologies, as brewscout said google is free, i was wrong about the freezer.

However its been my experience with adding fruit to beer(I do 4-5 fruit beers yearly), properly rinsing the fresh fruit then freezing works just fine. 15 fruit beers under my belt now and no infection from the fruit or off flavors.

Well, practice trumps theory, so I guess the method works. Perhaps it's the alcohol in he beer in the secondary is sufficient. Have to give this a try myself! Thanks!

Since I'll be using the Dole frozen blueberries which I think are already sterile, I'm going to pull them out of the freezer and put em in a blender and then into the bucket I think. I did get some blueberry extract from my lhbs, it is the brewer's best brand made by Carlson. I plan to use an ounce of it in the bottling bucket as well. In either case I'll keep everyone in the loop on how it goes!

Why cant you just soak the crushed blueberries in starsan if your worried?

I just racked a 2.5 gal wheat beer onto 4 lbs of blueberries.

I used the frozen method, no boiling/pasteurizing. Placed them in a sterilized grain bag, mashed em up real good with a potato masher, and wah-lah.

In 3-4 weeks we'll know if it worked!