No flavor

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Vanawaggin

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Louisville, KY
I brewed a Blueberry Wheat Ale July 4th, 2008. I used a Brewer's Best kit and added blueberries. Now honestly, I was trying something different in that I pureed the blueberries in a blender and added them to the primary. The end result is a beer with an immediate, fruity flavor(1 on scale of 1-10), slightly metallic(2 on scale of 1-10) and then no flavor. There is a hint of alcohol in the flavor but it disappears immediately as well. I suppose I just did everything wrong on this batch but it is odd that there is kind of a stale-ish flavored water sort of taste.
I think I'm going to a partial mash from now on. My IPA seems to have turned out well though. But my Blackberry Wheat Ale smells like it is gonna suck big time, too. Man! My first 3 or 4 batches were hits, too!
 
There are two things that I did with my last blueberry wheat that really accentuated the fruit flavor which sometimes can be very muted because of the dry beer character. The first is that I added 1 tsp of Acid Blend at kegging, this brings a brightness to the fruit flavor and makes the berry character sharper. The second was that I added 1 Tbsp of Sweet'n'Low at kegging; this brought out the traditional sweetness of berries to it. Sweet'n'Low is powerful stuff. You don't need a lot.

I played with this before adding them at kegging. I drew off a 6-8 oz and added granules of acid blend & sweet'n'low to an ounce of beer to get a sense if I liked it or not. It really took a good beer & made it spectacular.
 
Good idea! A tablespoon you say? So for a 5 gallon batch that would be about 1 or 2 "pink" packets? What about the acid blend before bottling? Same effect, you think?
 
A tablespoon is good. My guess is that's a bunch of packets -- at least 6, probably closer to 10 -- but it is for 5 full gallons of beer. Just measure the packets out.

I added the acid blend at the same time. I've heard of some folks using lemon juice instead & I suspect this would work fine, though I have a hard time knowing how much to use. I'm guessing the equivalent to the juice from one large lemon would be nice for 5 gallons. The brightness from the acid blend did more, I think, than the sweetner.
 
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