Fruit Beer Payette Plunder Huckleberry Porter

First off, a lot of credit to Calitexcomin - I based this recipe off of their Purple Headed Porter. I couldn't find a recipe for a Huckleberry porter, so I used theirs as a base. NOTE: This recipe has been scaled down to 3.5 gallons due to the small amount of Huckleberries I had. Adjust accordingly for your desired yield.

6.00 lb Pale Malt (American 2-row)
0.65 lb American Chocolate Malt (350L)
0.60 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt (40L)
0.20 lb UK Brown Malt (60L)
0.15 lb American Smoked Malt

1.0 oz UK Fuggle (4.5% AA) @ 60 min
0.2 oz UK Fuggle (4.5% AA) @ 10 min

0.6 lb Huckleberries @ 0 min
3.2 lb Huckleberries @ 2ndary (7-10 days before bottling)

0.25 tsp Irish Moss @ 15 min (probably unnecessary)
0.125 tsp Fermax Yeast Nutrient @ 10 min

Mashed at 152F for 70 min in 4.0 gallons, dunk sparged at 170F with 1 gallon. Boil for 60 minutes. Primary for 25 days @ 67-69F, secondary @ 67-69F for 7-10 days before bottling (see notes for Huckleberry use). Bottled with 73g priming sugar (also see notes).

Notes:
This was one of my first BIAB batches after moving on from extract brewing, and I'm still working on my efficiency. I think this batch was ~55%, so you will likely see a higher OG than 1.049 if you follow this recipe to the letter.
The huckleberries had been picked a couple months prior to brewing, and had been kept in the freezer. I put the berries through a couple freeze/thaw cycles to help burst cells. There were some small twigs/leaves along with the berries; nobody's perfect. I don't think this affected the flavor at all.
I was actually shooting for a 3gal post-boil volume, but ended up with 3.5gal. All of this went in to a 5gal primary carboy. 10 days prior to bottling, I pasteurized the Huckleberries by putting them in a sauce pan and heating them on to the stove to 170F and holding them there for ~15 minutes. I put the 3.2lb of Huckleberries in a 3gal carboy, and racked as much beer on to that until the carboy was nearly full, and racked the remaining gallon in to a glass growler. So I essentially split the batch into 3 gallons that sat on 3.2lb of Huckleberries for 10 days, and half a gallon that only had the Huckleberries that were added at flameout. On bottling day, I measured out priming sugar separately (61g for the 3 gallons, 12g for the 0.5gal growler) and primed/bottled the two beers separately. This was nice as I was able to taste the plain porter to see what it was like without the Huckleberries.

Results:
Delicious. The foam is purple, and the body has a purple tint to it as well. Dark, malty flavors with a very strong Huckleberry nose and flavor. If anything, the Huckleberry flavor might be a little too dominant (think Jones soda), so the 3.8lb bill may work well for a more subtle 5gal batch. I also may try adjusting the ratio of Huckleberries added at flameout to huckleberries added in secondary. The only other thing I may change next fall (as I will definitely be brewing this again with next years harvest) would be to try to get some chocolate flavors in there, I think they would really compliment the Huckleberries well. Can't wait to make this once I have my all-grain setup up and running and don't have to deal with the poor efficiency I've been getting using BIAB.

I struggle to make good fruit beers - I always think the next time I make one it will be great, but it seldom/never is. Maybe trying huckleberries is worth a shot - what do they taste like? Where do you get them?

Getting Huckleberries can be tough, and they are very regional. I got mine in central Idaho, hand-picked. They are very small berries and tedious to collect, so the 3.7lb used for this recipe probably took a good four hours of foraging in the woods. If you live in the Pacific Northwest, you can either pick them yourself or find them at a farmer's market (at a steep price due to the work involved in picking them and the fact that they are very tricky to cultivate on a large scale) when they are in season (in central Idaho it's early August). But apparently there are different species of Huckleberry that grow on the East Coast, so depending on where you live you should do some research and see if there are any local places to search for them. If not, you could probably try this recipe using ~0.75-1lb of blueberries per final gallon of beer. I'd buy them fresh, put them in a plastic bag, crush them to a mush, and put them through a few freeze/thaw cycles before using them. Good luck!