Blueberries en masse

[Jivetyrant]

I have a beautiful tasting wheat that's just finished primary. I plan to add 11lbs (eleven) of blueberries and am devising a plan to do so. I see a few options, but am a little lost as I've never added this quantity of fruit to any previous batches!

I could cook it down, as you would when making a proper blueberry pie. This would pasteurize it, but would probably necessitate adding some pectic enzyme to stave off excessive cloudiness. (I already have some on-hand)

I could mash and chemically pasteurize it with sulfite or sorbate. I've never done this before, my only experience with this was adding some campden tablets to a carboy before I dropped it off at a cider mill in town. I have heard that the amount needed varies significantly with the pH of the fruit you are using. I do not have a method to accurately determine pH.

I have heard that a hard freeze can take care of most of the offending little critters, but I don't know if that's true, or how long to freeze them for. I have a chest freezer that sits at a comfortable -10F.

Or I could RDWHAHB and simply mash them up and rack on top.

Thoughts and suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

[mewithstewpid]

I have a beautiful tasting wheat that's just finished primary. I plan to add 11lbs (eleven) of blueberries and am devising a plan to do so. I see a few options, but am a little lost as I've never added this quantity of fruit to any previous batches!

I could cook it down, as you would when making a proper blueberry pie. This would pasteurize it, but would probably necessitate adding some pectic enzyme to stave off excessive cloudiness. (I already have some on-hand)

I could mash and chemically pasteurize it with sulfite or sorbate. I've never done this before, my only experience with this was adding some campden tablets to a carboy before I dropped it off at a cider mill in town. I have heard that the amount needed varies significantly with the pH of the fruit you are using. I do not have a method to accurately determine pH.

I have heard that a hard freeze can take care of most of the offending little critters, but I don't know if that's true, or how long to freeze them for. I have a chest freezer that sits at a comfortable -10F.

Or I could RDWHAHB and simply mash them up and rack on top.

Thoughts and suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Ok, I have a pretty good deal of experience with blueberries, as I have been trying to perfect the art of adding blueberries to beer, and I must say it is difficult!

On one hand, you could add blueberry extract at bottling, but this leaves a lot more blueberry aroma, and little taste, and that taste is pretty artificial.

The next logical choice would be to add blueberries to secondary, like you are saying. Fresh? Frozen? Do you need to pasteurize? the EASIEST thing to do is buy frozen blueberries, freeze/thaw them a few times to break down the walls, and add them to secondary and rack on top. no pasteurization necessary. no campden tablets, either.

The question remains as to how much, and this is the kicker. I've done everything from 3lb to 6lb to my most recent being 10lb all in 5 gallon batches. Nothing has really come close to what i wanted. First, the 3lb one dont have much of anything. On the other hand, the 10lb addition made the beer HORRIBLE, just horrible. In fact, i only use that beer to make pancakes with. It tastes like wine, blueberry wine.

Therefore, I would advise against adding 11lb to your batch 9unless i misread and it is not a 5 gallon batch). The best results have been achieved adding 1lb per gallon and a little bit of extract at bottling (2-4oz, to taste), which seems to give the beers both real fruit flavor and aroma.

hope this helps!

 

[Brad1775]

perhaps macerate them after bringing to 168 degrees in a boil kettle (full blueberries) then add sugar to get them to burst and give out their sweet sweet flavors. At that point, I woudl consider freeze distilling the macerated mix to get more of the good stuff out of the blueberries.

Or, make a lambic and rack on blueberries, it'l be funky and take a long time, but thats right up my alley

 

[Jivetyrant]

I've decided to freeze then lightly mash them then rack on top. Wish me luck!