Blueberry Wheat

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branding-iron316

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How many lbs of blueberries should I put in the secondary of my wheat beer base? I have a 6 lb can from the home brew store but think 6 lbs is too much. Thoughts???
 
The fermentation will kick back up and you will lose quite a bit of the blueberry flavor and aroma. Two suggestions - 1) look in the recipe database here on HBT under fruit beers and see what others have done and 2) get a copy of Radical Brewing, he talks a lot about fruit beers. To me, six pounds doesn't sound like too much. Good luck!
 
Ok now a stupid question but it is not my first and it won't be my last: my secondary I typically do in a glass Carboy. Ok to do with the blueberries or is it better to put in plastic bucket again? Once beer is syphoned in, stir to mix in blueberries??
 
Put the fruit in first, then rack the beer on top of it. No stirring.

I used 3 lbs in 3 gallons on mine. Everyone liked it and it had a noticeable fruit flavor, but nobody could tell it was blueberries. Depending on how much blueberry flavor you want, you could use up to 10 pounds of blueberries. They have a much more mild flavor than most fruits. You could also use your 6 pounds of fruit and 3 ounces of extract flavoring. I've read on other threads that using the extract with real fruit gives a better rounded flavor. FWIW, Seadog BluePaw uses all extract.
 
Also make sure your fruit is well pulverized. If that is 6 pounds of purée, that is fine. If it is whole fruit, freeze it, thaw it, and blender it. If it is a can, you can dump that right in. If you are making your own purée, you need to sterilize it somehow. I heated mine to 160F for 10 minutes and chilled.
 
I was instructed by my home brew store owner that 4 lbs is enough for the standard 2nd fermentation with fruit. He also highly suggusted to not add fruit to the carboy but to ferment the fruit in another bucket setup as what takes place in your 1st stage.
 
I have a blueberry wheat conditioning right now. I used 4 pounds of blueberries and one pound of raspberries. I'll let everyone know how it ends up once it's done. I did a strawberry blonde a month ago and used 2.8lbs and it was perfect. Blueberries aren't as sweet so I figure 5 pounds will be fine.

I heated them at about 170F for 20 mins to sanitize. I poured them into my glass carboy (pain in the ass) then siphoned my wheat from the plastic primary to the glass. I got some decent action, but the blowoff tube I hooked up ended up not being needed. I would hook up a blowoff for the first 2 days just to be safe (blueberry stains are baddd).

2012-07-18 20.36.54.jpg
 
thisbuds4u said:
He also highly suggusted to not add fruit to the carboy but to ferment the fruit in another bucket setup as what takes place in your 1st stage.

This solution sounds intriguing but I would want to know a lot more about the process. It sort of reminds me of Clutch by New Belgium. Are you using wine or ale yeast to ferment the fruit in the second container? If wine, do you need to kill that yeast before you mix the two? Or combine and age a bit together?

As a general rule, I take LHBS advice with a grain of salt. For example, my LHBS didn't have blueberry extract so he suggested that instead of putting 3 pounds of blueberries in, I should make my own extract by pouring vodka over my berries and let them sit for a week or two, then just add the flavored vodka at bottling time. Does it make any sense that the flavored vodka would somehow get more flavor out of those berries than adding them directly? Also, there is no fermenting going on there so it seems pretty reasonable that you would be also adding an incalculable amount of sugar at bottling. How is that not a recipe for disaster?
 
As a general rule, I take LHBS advice with a grain of salt... Also, there is no fermenting going on there so it seems pretty reasonable that you would be also adding an incalculable amount of sugar at bottling. How is that not a recipe for disaster?

Oh my. That's some bad advice on a couple levels. Maybe a new thread idea? Worst LBHS advice ever?
 
I plan to use a 6lb can of blueberries from my home brew shop. How long in secondary? I'm thinking a month
 
Good question thoughts? I am going to put a can of vintners harvest blueberry wine base in to the secondary
 
marshallbeer said:
What would happen if you put the blueberries in during the boil?

First, you would have a cooked berry flavor, which is fine if that is what you are going for, but very different from a fresh berry flavor.

Also, with all the CO2 that is blowing off during an active fermentation, a lot of people report that they loose a little flavor and a lot of aroma. That's the same reason you dry hop after fermentation.
 
So I tasted my blueberry wheat last night after almost two weeks bottle-conditioning. When I first tasted it before bottling it definitely had a "Flinstones vitamin" aroma to it. I was a little worried I would still get that, but after bottle conditioning I did not.

The aroma was definitely all blueberry, not too strong but you can definitely smell it. After my first taste I was so happy, it tastes awesome! The extra addition of raspberry adds a little bite to the blueberry, which was what I was going for. The color was a little purple because of the red/blue color mix of the fruits. But I'm extremely happy how it turned out. Here are my notes of what I did in case some are curious.

4 lbs of fresh-picked frozen blueberries
1 lb of fresh-picked frozen raspberries
"Pasteurize" for 15 minutes at 170 deg. F, enough water to just cover all the fruit
Poured into the bottom of a 5 gallon glass carboy, let cool for a while
Siphoned my wort from the primary to the secondary
Conditioned for 2.5 weeks in the secondary

I have my recipe here: http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/12837/macbeth-wheat
 
Sounds like a lot of blueberry, but it also sounds good.

I did a Sunset Wheat clone with 2 oz extract and 1 lb sanitized blueberries in 5 gallons of wheat base beer. Good mixture of light blueberry flavor and aroma. I will likely go the same amounts next time.
 
I use 68 Brix concentrated pure blueberry juice, if you can find something similar in the UK. 6 or 7 pounds of it (easier to measure weight than volume) for a 10-gallon batch, added when fermentation is mostly done but still going just a little bit (though it starts back up when you hit it with that much sugar.) All the sugar is simple and gets fermented, so the finish is dry, and quite tart from the berries.

I did my first blueberry Kolsch as a 1-gallon batch, to get things right and see if I liked it. 10 gallons seems like a lot if it doesn't turn out...
 
I have tried whole (squished) blueberries and blueberry juice. The whole berries were far superior. A lot of what we consider blueberry flavor is in the skin so my juice batch seemed flat. I use a 1-gallon bag of berries, added after primary fermentation has slowed down. I keg and chill it about 5 days later as I am sure there are a lot of wild fermenters on the berries and I don't want to give them time to take off and potentially ruin the whole batch.
 
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