Blueberries in my hefeweizen

I'm a relatively new brewer and am currently doing partial mash recipes. My latest batch is a repeat of an earlier hefeweizen that turned out really great. But this time I was planning on adding blueberries in the secondary. I am racking tomorrow so was hoping to get some last minute advice on my chosen approach.

I have experimented with soaking blueberries in water and have noticed that blueberries do not leach much without some "encouragement", i.e. boiling and/or crushing. Even then, blueberries appear to be quite a bit less flavorful than other berries such as raspberries.

I have 8 lbs of blueberries that are currently frozen. My plan is to boil them in a small amount of water and then crush in solution. This would have the added benefit of sterilization. I was then going to add the whole mess into the carboy and rack on top (this is a 5 gallon batch).

I currently expect the secondary fermentation may go on a little longer due to the added sugar, but I'll watch the airlock closely and delay bottling if necessary.

Anyone else tried something similar and have any suggestions? I'd love to hear any thoughts.

Cheers,
Joel

I simply crush my frozen blueberries in a big ziplock, let them thaw and add them straight to the secondary. I do this in a porter and I get lots of flavor. (7 lbs for 5 gallons). Done it twice now and both times it came out great.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm racking tonight, and will post the results here when we taste it!

I look forward to hearing how this comes out for you. I have been interested in trying something like it myself.

This batch has been in the bottle about a week, so I thought I'd post a follow-up.

The flavour of the hefeweizen on which we based this is overpowered by the blueberries for sure. So any concern I had about a lack of blueberry flavour has been mitigated. I think the biggest lesson here has been that blueberries simply don't have a lot of fruity, sweet flavour. This beer is drinking like a crisp, dry cider. So it's good but quite different from what I was expecting.

The yield was only 16.5 litres (on a normally 23 litre batch) because of the massive amount of fruit trub. Because of the low yield, and because the local blueberries cost about as much as the other ingredients, this beer is about 3x as expensive as usual. Oh well.

The whole experience makes me want to put about 5 pounds of raspberries in a porter or something next summer when those are in season around here. I'll post about that then. In the meantime, time for another Blue Harvest!

Just to let you know about putting fruit into a porter, I recently brewed a robust porter. In the secondary I added three lbs of frozen (and thawed) peaches, let them sit there for 2 weeks, and at bottling time, I added 2oz of peach extract. Holy rusted metal batman, this beer is gooooood. The frest peaches gave it a tart peach taste (like your blueberries did) and the extract gave it a nice sweet and aromatic character. I brewed this for my brother in laws wedding, and it was a huge hit. At 6.7% it also kicked some ass in return

Thanks for the notes Deuce! I'll have to remember the idea of using whole fruit and extract.

A peach or blueberry porter? Sounds interesting lol

The peach porter was fantasic.... my brother in law and I came up with it when we were hammered, so I brewed it for his wedding day. We called it "Earls Peach Karma" I used a robust porter base recipe, steeped some earls gray tea in the boil, and used peaches in the secondary, and extract at bottle time. I enjoyed one of those tonight, man are they good!

Earl grey tea in the boil eh? I would have thought that would throw off too many tannins. Sounds interesting.

Nah... last 5 min of boil and it was great!

i did raspberries in my heffe and lost a good 2 inches out to the bottom of my carboy to fruit/trub. I didn't boil but i steeped the raspberries at 165 for 10-15 minutes. The result was a nice syrup with the whole berries in it. tossed the whole thing into the secondary and away fermentation went. I did some math and guessed that the whole process kicked ABV up another .65% for 3lbs/5 gal. don't know how it will taste yet, it gets bottled on wednesday. will tell you in 10 days!

deyoung said:

This batch has been in the bottle about a week, so I thought I'd post a follow-up.

The flavour of the hefeweizen on which we based this is overpowered by the blueberries for sure. So any concern I had about a lack of blueberry flavour has been mitigated. I think the biggest lesson here has been that blueberries simply don't have a lot of fruity, sweet flavour. This beer is drinking like a crisp, dry cider. So it's good but quite different from what I was expecting.

The yield was only 16.5 litres (on a normally 23 litre batch) because of the massive amount of fruit trub. Because of the low yield, and because the local blueberries cost about as much as the other ingredients, this beer is about 3x as expensive as usual. Oh well.

The whole experience makes me want to put about 5 pounds of raspberries in a porter or something next summer when those are in season around here. I'll post about that then. In the meantime, time for another Blue Harvest!

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I brewed a strong blueberry ale (about 6.5 % est ABV) and used a grain bag, which cut down on the loss of beer. I will say that this was the first batch I used Nottingham yeast as well and I was shocked at the amount of sedimentation. I even called my wife over to show her. I didn't lose as much as you in the yield, but did cut the yeild a little.

While the bier didn't turn out the way I expected (not as sweet/malty), it is very tasty. Malty, but crisp and tart. Drinking one right now, actually. :cross: