american wheat question

[dsteele1234]

i brewed an american wheat about 6 days ago do you guys think it would be good if i added some blueberries in the secondary?

 

[azscoob]

sure! why not? I plunked 5 lbs into a pale ale the other day, I also recently had a hit of a beer, an American wheat secondaried on some fresh watermelon juice, that keg lasted one day at a small party at a friends house, (actually I threw the recipe together, he brewed it on my rig, I fermented it and secondaried it for him) in the summer, I like a nice fruit beer, as does the wife.

 

[dsteele1234]

sounds good what exactly is the best way and im going to buy frozen berries so what should i do to them before putting them in the beer

 

[azscoob]

I wash them, then put them into the freezer to freeze solid in a sealed but unvacuumed vacuum packer bag, then I remove them, open the bag and vacuum it before sealing, I put it in a sink of water to thaw, the vacuum in the bag crushes the berries as they thaw, I then sanitize the bag, cut it open and dump them into the sanitized secondary. rack the beer onto the fruit being careful not to splash, ad blowoff tube and let it go a week or so, check grav as usual to verify its done, crash cool it to drop any floating fruit and yeast clumps, keg as usual.

(you could also thaw them in a zippy bag, mush em up in the bag and then transfer, I just really like playing with the vacuum packer, I have three of em. )

 

[dsteele1234]

ok sounds good...so i should definitely mash them up?

 

[rexbanner]

ok sounds good...so i should definitely mash them up?

From Radical Brewing:

"Blueberries are another fruit that does not not hold up well in fermentation. The fresh blueberry character is so delicate that it often gets lost in the context of a beer."

Keep in mind that not all fruits were meant to go in beer. Fruits contain sugars which ferment out, and many will dry out so much that they won't resemble the flavor you're expecting.

 

[azscoob]

From Radical Brewing:

"Blueberries are another fruit that does not not hold up well in fermentation. The fresh blueberry character is so delicate that it often gets lost in the context of a beer."

Keep in mind that not all fruits were meant to go in beer. Fruits contain sugars which ferment out, and many will dry out so much that they won't resemble the flavor you're expecting.

Very true, and that is why I secondary most fruit, to avoid the heavy fermentation, the recipe I made also had a bit of honey malt in it, I find the sweetness from it in the finished beer lends some backbone to the fruit, makes the subtle fruit flavor pop a bit more.

 

[riverfrontbrewer]

Or maybe only add the berries to 1 gallon or half the batch....then just in case it doesn't work out you haven't ruined all 5 gallons.

Good Luck!

 

[triethylborane]

Would a blueberry puree make a difference?

 

[rexbanner]

Very true, and that is why I secondary most fruit, to avoid the heavy fermentation, the recipe I made also had a bit of honey malt in it, I find the sweetness from it in the finished beer lends some backbone to the fruit, makes the subtle fruit flavor pop a bit more.

I didn't feel like typing the rest of that, but he basically said that blueberries are not the best for brewing.

I'm not sure about this, but maybe if you tried adding them after cold crashing or something, it might keep the flavor intact. If you guys have ever had a blueberry beer from the store, or a blueberry-flavored anything, you'll probably notice that such products always taste artificial and IMO, not very good. That's because blueberry is a very difficult flavor to duplicate accurately.

I don't bother with real fruit anyways. IMO, fruit extract is less risky in a couple of ways.

 

[humann_brewing]

experimenting is one of the reasons why we brew, go for it but I agree with the split it up and try it out on a portion of the batch.