Blackberry beer

[beertalk]

A find a new recipe but i'm not sure if it's a good idea. What do you think about blackberry beer?

 

[dmtaylor]

I haven't done it myself yet with blackberries, but I have done tart cherries before with good success. In the case of blackberries, the best thing might be to purchase a canned puree where it's precooked and all the cell walls broken down. Or you could cook your own, like making jam but without adding pectin. It would taste great in a porter or stout especially, but any style is probably fine. I would use about 2 pounds per gallon to start. The time to add this is in secondary, when you place the berries into a sanitized fermenter and then rack the beer on top of it, then allow this to ferment on the berries for another 3-4 weeks. When fermentation is complete, consider adding gelatin to knock out the yeast and pectin haze to result in a clear beer.

Be aware that the resulting beer will be very very sour, as blackberries are actually quite sour, so you will want to balance this with unfermentable sugars such as lactose or maltodextrin, in an amount of about 1 pound per 5 gallons or 0.2 lb per gallon. This can either be added during the boil, or added with any priming sugar on bottling day.

Good luck! If done right, it will taste great. If not, it could be a thin sour mess.

 

[Pappers_]

Hi, welcome to HBT! I've moved this to the recipe subforum, where members talk about recipes. Personally, a blackberry beer doesn't sound appealing, but I've never tried one. Good luck!

 

[pointcity-homebrew]

All of the blackberry beers that I have tried, including on that I brewed, did not do it for me.

Give it a whirl, it may be your taste. Worse case is you chock it up as experience.

 

[IslandLizard]

I've had some subtle blackberry beers that were quite OK, as long as the blackberries are not too pronounced, and IMO they can work well in sours with diligent and restrained use.

On the other side of the scale, I had a Blackberry Steel Reserve last week, and it was way way way too sweet and overbearing. This means it was heavily back sweetened and either completely filtered from yeast, sorbated, and/or pasteurized. It also didn't taste like beer at all, not even like Steel Reserve, more like soda with a resulting buzz if one could consume enough of it, which I doubt would be possible.

That Blackberry SR reminded me of today's Lindeman's Framboise (not what they brewed 40-50 years ago), all the sweetness, but without the complex Lambic backbone character, desired tartness, and beautiful Raspberry flavor and aroma. Again, closer to a grape soda, and not very palatable as such.

 

[fermentology]

First question: sour or not?

I've used blackberries before, but they are going into an already sour beer. Whenever I use fruit its for a sour beers so I just freeze the fruit for a few days and then add it to the beer.

 

[itsnotrequired]

First question: sour or not?

I've used blackberries before, but they are going into an already sour beer. Whenever I use fruit its for a sour beers so I just freeze the fruit for a few days and then add it to the beer.

this. my local brewery makes a blackberry berliner weisse, very tasty. not sure how the flavor would work in a non-sour beer.

 

[dcrog]

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=56285

I made an all grain of this last year and split the batch to half on raspberry and half on blackberry.

I liked them both. But the raspberry was more my favorite.

 

[kempshark]

5 Rabbits Chocofruit Zarzamora is a blackberry (chocolate) stout that I enjoyed. Unlike Founders Big Lushious (raspberry) that was waaay too sweet, I rather liked the slight tartness of the blackberries in the Zarzamora.....

I also think they would be great in a sour.....like a Berliner Weisse....

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

I am a new brewer too. I am currently fermenting my fourth beer an American Amber Ale and will bottle that this weekend. As a new brewer, I still have a great deal to learn. There are folks who jump in to all grain 5 gallon and have made decent beer and there are folks who based on what I have seen on this forum haven't done as well. Instead of secondaries and adjuncts, you may just want to make some nice tasty normal English Bitter or Blonde Ale. Each time you add something that isn't a standard beer ingredient you add complexity. My first beer was a Craft-A-Beer Oktobeerfest Ale and it was more than I could handle even though it shouldn't have been that hard. If I did it now, it would be a breeze. My third batch was my first really good beer and even though it didn't carb perfectly was awesome.

 

[vNmd]

One of my all time favorites was Sam Adams Blackberry Witbier, until they stopped making it.

There was a clone recipe from AHS I tried once. The beer part turned out ok, but the blackberry flavouring was way off of the original.

 

[sleepycreek]

Do you think the clone would have worked better if you used real blackberries as opposed to just flavoring?

 

[TBC]

I made a blackberry wheat in 2014 with 6lbs of blackberries from my bushes. I racked the beer onto the fruit after I puréed it. The secondary fermentation was pretty violent and blew the air lock off my carboy. It had a nice purple hue to the beer but it had a wine taste to it. Unfortunately last year for whatever reason my bushes didn't produce much fruit at all and I didn't make it again. The beer was a hit and I plan on making it this year but I will probably reduce the blackberries by a pound this time so it doesn't quite taste like a blackberry wine.

 

[vNmd]

Do you think the clone would have worked better if you used real blackberries as opposed to just flavoring?

Probably somewhat better but the amount of work / testing would be insane. The BB flavouring was not even close in taste. The intensity would be a variable I would be willing to work with if the flavouring was close. I don't know how many different varieties of BBs there are or how different they are, but it is probably a lot.

I also do the Blue Moon clone. There is a great thread here on what it took to get a good proximity to that. I couldn't imagine going through what they did.

 

[Talgrath]

Hi, welcome to HBT! I've moved this to the recipe subforum, where members talk about recipes. Personally, a blackberry beer doesn't sound appealing, but I've never tried one. Good luck!

Big E Ales in Washington has a pretty good blackberry ale that I like, usually what I fill a growler with when I visit (admittedly, I haven't been impressed with their other stuff).

http://www.bigeales.com/menu/

 

[Moose_MI]

There's a Belgian blonde recipe on here called SWMBO Slayer that on 2 occasions I added a moderate amount of blackberry extract to. It's my wife's favorite beer not to mention a few other folks.

The problem is that I don't care for fruit in my booze and I'm not proud of using extract so I avoid making it. I will say Samuel Smith makes a Raspberry beer that I appreciate in small doses

 

[NorsemenAdam]

My wife makes a Blackberry Kolsch that is pretty tasty. She started using 4lbs per 5 gallons, but ended up backing it off to 3lbs. And even so she still back sweetens it a bit. She uses frozen berries and adds them to the secondary straight from the freezer. Good luck!

 

[k-moe]

Boysenberries would be a better choice if you want to avoid the sourness (McMenamins Purple Haze wheat beer was a favorite of mine years ago). Otherwise I'd carefully choose very ripe blackberies if you can pick them yourself.