black berrys??

[f45bob]

I just picked two flats of blackberrys and am tinking of doing a blackberry dark ale/stout my plan is to use john bull dark ale extract boil in say 2lbs of black berrys and maybe 1lbs of shuger just to get a bit more kick.

I am thinking of just putting the berrys in a blender then into the boil

any advice would be great, even if I shoudl not even try it teh berries will make great smoothies too

tia

 

[peterfuse]

i am thinking of doing a berry ale soon too. apparently its not good to add the berrys in the boil because you will release the pectin in the fruit which is undesireable. if you do secondary fermentation, try pastuerising the berrys then adding them to the secondary fermenter. rack from the primary on top of it.

also simple sugars arent great to add to a brew, although they do ferment they reduce the body of the ale.

I'm no expert but these are my understandings. otherwise a berry stout sounds great, i love stout.

 

[1fastdoc]

Doesn't really apply to your case but when I made a blackberry wheat I used 5 lbs of frozen berries, which I added to the chilling wort and then transferred the whole goopy mess to primary for a week. I racked it with a strainer into a secondary.

I think next time I would use 3-4 lbs as 5 is a bit strong.

 

[david_42]

Freeze them, mash them and add to secondary. Do not blend them! They are a big enough pain to remove just mashed. In fact, I recommend you put them in a big grain bag and use a pail for the secondary.

 

[f45bob]

the seeds allways get stuck in my teeth when i eat balck barrys. i was wondering about a juicer......hummm I could be just thinking tooooo much I must need another beer

 

[weetodd]

You could follow the same process as david recommended, except put them in a grain bag and then squeeze the mess out of them into the secondary and then rack on top of it.