Blueberry Ale low gravity after fruit addition

It's not really a beginner question but I figure it'll help out someone else.

I'm in the process of making a blueberry ale for the lady. I started with a basic ale recipe, with low hops, and added 3lbs of blueberry to the primary after a week of fermentation. See recipe below:

BIAB
8lbs 2-row
1lbs Crystal 60L
Mash at 152 for 90 min

1oz tettnang @ 60min

1 packet US-05 pitched at ~75F cooled to ~70F in water bath overnight.

3lbs of frozen blueberries added @ 1week to primary


It's now 2 weeks since pitching, 1 week since adding the blueberries. I checked my gravity and it's holding at 1.008. Previous measurements were 1.038OG, and 1.010 after 1 week. My guess is that after adding the fruit it dried out the beer a fair bit. I tasted the gravity sample and there's little to no fruit taste to it, but there's a definite alcohol twang. I'm not sure if maybe the initial pitching temp caused some aldehydes to form, or if it's just the high alcohol relative to the lack of body. Tastes more along the lines of a fruit wine.

Anyways, aside from letting it sit and hopefully mellowing out, are there any other suggested fixes? Also, what have other people done when adding a high sugar content fruit?

1.010 seems low, but maybe that is expected with such a low OG. adding fruit means you added sugar, so that should not lower the FG. you may have accidentally added wild yeast, which will cause a lower FG than clean ale yeast.

you can add powdered dextrin if you want to raise the FG. try to watch your batch and see if you contaminated it with wild yeast. wild yeast will often cause a ring of residue in the neck of the bottle while you are carbonating. if it is infected with wild yeast, you will want to refrigerate the bottles (and keep them cold) as soon as the beer is fully carbonated so that you don't create bottle bombs.

also, are you sure that your mash thermometer is accurate?

I've done a ton of fruit beers and blueberries are hard to pull remarkable character from, however, you may consider this. Fruit even frozen may have dormant wild yeast along for the ride so pitching strait in was gutsy. when using fresh or frozen fruit always blanche then in a pot on the stove, just enough time to have the fruits skin open up. Then dump the hot concoction right onto your beer. Let it ferment out and rack off of the floating fruit. Let that settle and keg/bottle. Blanching really sterilizes the fruit and helps concentrate the pectins giving it that blueberry nose you were looking for. Heck man I would blanch another 3 lbs and rack your beer right on to it in another fermenter, that is if you don't think its toast from a cross infection

The FG of 1.10 is really low for 3lbs of blue berries. Without blanching I find the goodies stay locked inside the skin of the fruit, well eventually the skin breaks down, however you don't want to wait that long its not a lager..... hmmmm I have an idea.

Final note, I would (personally ) only do my fruit additions on a secondary racking. Fresh sugars and all that grub gone, yeast get going again real fast.

Well I let the beer sit a while longer and things did mellow out a bit. There's not so much an alcohol twang to it as it's more of a fruity tartness, kind of like a red wine. Anyways, after sitting and crashing it I decided to balance out the tartness with some lactose. I ended up adding 4oz and it turned out just fine. Granted the blueberry taste isn't there as much as I wanted it, it definitely has the aroma. I'll chalk this one up to a learning experience and will plan on blanching whatever fruit I put in my beer next time.

Thanks for all the suggestions!

This thread got my attention - I just racked a wit onto large can of Oregon blueberry puree after 2 weeks in the primary. My first experiment with Oregon puree.

MtBiker - you added the fruit after 1 week in primary? I did that once, and I was sure that the extra fermentation scrubbed all the fruit flavor/aroma out of there. I added 3# of mango puree, and it was not noticeable at all.

I want to leave on the blueberries for 2 weeks, and then pull a taste sample to see how it's going...but I hear it's going to be a very subtle flavor.

Have you guys considered adding a blueberry flavored vodka at bottling? I did it to some hard lemonade and some skeeter pee and it is VERY good. It takes quite a bit( 2 fifths for 5 gallons) and it does bump the ABV but not enough to ruin the taste of either of those. I am just wondering out loud.

Unibrow- I actually added the fruit after 2 weeks in the primary, and let the fruit sit for one week after that.

I would take the previous suggestions of blanching the fruit before adding it. I'd also add it to the secondary after at least 2 weeks in the primary (probably more like 3). My initial try with fruit didn't yield much in terms of flavor. Although it did turn the beer a purple haze-ish color.

Good Luck!

Thx Biker

I added the BB puree after 2 weeks in the primary. My gravity went from 1.056 to 1.011 in that time, so I felt the main fermentation was over. There was a small 2nd fermentation when I added the puree, and my airlock bubbled a tiny bit for the next 24 hours, but then stopped. This is exactly what I was going for...didn't want a big 2nd fermentation to keep the BB flavor locked in there.

I didn't need to blanch because it was the Oregon puree - but I'm wondering how long I should keep in the 2ndary carboy now. 1 weeks doesn't seem like enough time to sit on the fruit. I'm planning for 2 weeks on the fruit, but if other people have suggestions about blueberry puree, I'm open to learning. Thanks!

Well I'm out of useful information at this point. I'm going to guess there's a point where you're not going to get anymore additional flavor from the fruit with it just sitting there, but I could be wrong. I think the amount of fruit and how it's processed (puree, frozen, boiled) will have more of an impact. Feel free to reply with your results!