Blueberry Ale

[Hamsterheadsalem]

So my wife likes blueberries. She wants me to brew a blueberry ale. I'm thinking a standard extract ale recipe with blueberries added to the ferment.
My question is this.
How much do I add, and should I add in the primary or secondary ferment ? And should it be whole berries or crushed or purred?
And btw, thinking 1oz cascade hops at 60 with either a 1056 wyeast or maybe an English strain. Your thoughts?

 

[sweed]

Do you mind purple beer? If you don't you can added blueberry juice or like 5lbs of blueberries to the secondary.
I didn't want purple beer for my cream ale, so I just added 4 oz of extract to the bottling bucket, and it's very subtle. I did have 6 gallons though. It turned out great.

I have heard you lose the blueberry flavor when you use straight blueberries.

 

[BRENTMAN]

Just brewed a blueberry ale. In bottles right now. We used 4 lbs of frozen blueberries (freeze/thawed twice to break the cell walls) and added them into secondary. It's coming out pretty tart and dry. Added 3/4 lb of maltodextrin in the bottling bucket to try to sweeten it up; it helped a tad. Not quite the blueberry ale I was going for, but not a bad beer by any means. Next time I'll dabble with just trying blueberry extract, or a different method of doing blueberry.

 

[BxBrewer]

Extracts are where its at. I know others ail say different. In my experience if you want a hassle free way of adding a hint of flavor go extract. The problem with flavoring beer is well..... its still beer. You cant take a beer and turn it into a Bacrdi silver. Its just not going to happen.

 

[BRENTMAN]

Extracts are where its at. I know others ail say different. In my experience if you want a hassle free way of adding a hint of flavor go extract. The problem with flavoring beer is well..... its still beer. You cant take a beer and turn it into a Bacrdi silver. Its just not going to happen.

I really think I'll try a blueberry extract next time. So much easier and cleaner. The fact that flavored beer is still beer seems far from a problem to me! I think what made me try the real thing first instead of extract is hearing people say that the extract can tend to be a "fake" flavor, or make like a beer-pop; perhaps like a leiny summer shandy, etc. But come to think of it, I'd rather this beer have leaned more toward that than what it is right now; tart, dry, a bit soury, etc. I'm probably going to do something with hazelnut extract for a holiday type brew, so that'll give me some experience to work with...

 

[Johnnyhitch1]

Hassle free: Extracts...

Real Deal (IMO, why we homebrew): Use around 1 pd of blueberries per gallon, more or less to taste where 2pds per gallon will get you close to blueberry juice beer and .75pd per gal, a light dry berry aroma/faint taste.

Put them in the freezer for a couple days untill they become rock hard, you can see that the skins should rip a little. Without thawing throw them in your secondary and rack the beer over it. I wouldnt go over 10-12 days just for that fact the skins contains tannins and you dont want astringency in your final product. Taste on the 6th day and judge from there.

Cheers!

There are "better" tasting extracts out there but there is no getting around its usually synthetic alcohol based extracts that are very foul and twangy giving the beer a horrible off flavor as the desired flavor starts to fade.

 

[wefdog]

A local brewery by me mixed a blueberry ale and an oatmeal stout in a growler 50:50 It was amazing. Got me thinking about making an oatmeal stout and flavoring it with blueberry extract. Wondering if it would be as good...

 

[eyedogtor]

I just wanted to chime in and say - don't think you need to resort to extracts to add fruit flavor to beer. I have had great luck with a Kiwi Wheat and a Raspberry Saison ... both done with real fruit.

Pat

 

[RM-MN]

Some fruits lend themselves to being added directly to the fermenting beer but blueberries are more difficult as the flavor is delicate and when you add enough blueberries to get some flavor you beer will be purple and still not taste particularly like blueberry ale. Extract flavorings also vary in quality with some having a very artificial taste to them. I've seen recommendations for Bickford Flavorings but haven't tried them myself.