Blueberry in secondary made base beer bitter

[ballegre]

I have to serve this beer at a wedding in 3 weeks. I split a 10 gallon Summer Ale and added blueberry puree to 5 gallons. I sampled the beer before adding blueberry and it was fine. 5 days in secondary and there's a bitter aftertaste. The 5 gallons without blueberry is fine. FG is 1.014 on both. OG 1.051.

I kegged the 5 gallons of base beer (without blueberry) but I decided to give the blueberry more time in secondary thinking the bitterness will ferment out. I'll sample in a couple of days.

Should I just keg it and let it cold condition? Would that be better than leaving in the secondary?

Any ideas what's happening and how to fix the bitter aftertaste?

 

[kingwood-kid]

It's probably some combination of the acid from the blueberries and the extra yeast in solution. If it's done eating the blueberries, then cold-crashing to drop the yeast and whatever else is floating in there should help. You could try back-sweetening, which is easy in a keg and dangerous in bottles. Another idea is adding a tiny amount of salt, as sodium helps mask bitterness.

 

[sparksanthony]

My brother brewed a beer and added blueberries in the secondary. Had some similar problems. To me, they don't much (good) flavor to anything...cept pancakes

 

[ballegre]

Yeah, well the blueberry wasn't my idea - it was a request from my future daughter in-law and it's HER wedding I was able to convince her to make half without.

After letting it ferment for 3 more days, a total of 8 days in secondary on the blueberry puree, the bitterness has diminished substantially. The berry flavor is very subtle (expected) and there's a hazy purple hue (quite ugly actually) but I think it will be fine. I have about 3 weeks to condition. It's cold crashing in the fridge now. I may consider adding a little extract to give the berry a little boost. We'll see.

Thanks for the replies.