Brewing with Blackberries

With the berries ripening, I figured it would be fun to try a blackberry beer. I've found a few recipes for blackberry wheats, but then I ran across someone mentioning a blackberry stout. Being a huge stout fan, this has been on my mind now. Unfortunately I can't find a recipe for one, or at least I haven't found one yet.

Anyone with one, preferably one with good results?

Also, I would rather use actual berries, not concentrate or liquid flavoring. So, any advice towards that end would be helpful. Also, in regards to that, I have never seen mentioned whether partially mashing the berries would help/hurt in bringing out the flavor. To me it doesn't seem that simply adding whole berries would let out the flavor very efficiently. Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Fruit is for wine and pies, grains are for beer.

Best I can do for ya.

I found that the flavor is a bit metallic, and boiling them ruins the keyboard and screen.




Sorry...couldn't resist. Freeze the berries before using them. The ice crystals naturally break/bruise the fruit a bit.

Yuri_Rage said:

I found that the flavor is a bit metallic, and boiling them ruins the keyboard and screen.

Sorry...couldn't resist.

Click to expand...

Damn! Took me a while to catch that one....Palm guy here.

I haven't used blackberries in beer, although I've had a blackberry stout(1). To use them in cider, I freeze them, then thaw and heat to 165F for 10 minutes. They go in a wine bag (like a grain bag but much bigger) and the bag goes in the fermenter with the apple juice. That ended up being half apple, half blackberry.

For a stout, I'd try 4-5 lbs in the secondary.

Note 1: Blackberries are good at fixing a batch of stout that went sour.