Blueberry wheat beer

[AndrewPostula]

With the holidays coming up I was thinking about my first crack at a fruit beer using blueberries added to a wheat based recipe. I was wondering if anyone has used a tincture to get their blueberry flavor or how well they have been able to incorporate a blueberry flavor in thier whet beer and how they did it. Thanks for any input.

 

[divrack]

I have a pretty damn good kettle sour wit base blueberry and raspberry beer.
Despite being Scottish wild blaeberry technically a which have much more flavour, and having about 5lb of them compared to less than a lb of raspberries, the raspberry is still slightly dominant.

Don't know about tincture, it might help get the berry flavour out, but I suspect you will still need a tonne of fruit for a good blueberry flavour. A lot of blueberry things just use that horrible artificial flavouring to get the taste.

 

[Jag75]

I did a blueberry honey ale and used blueberry flavoring from the homebrew store . Was pretty dang good

 

[Leezer]

I just did a 2.5 gal batch with about 2 lbs of fresh local blueberries and was disappointed to find it has hardly any blueberry flavor. If I do one again I’ll try a flavoring.

 

[Transamguy77]

I’ve done a few with fresh blueberries, about a pound per gallon and I added them right to the keg. I have found the flavorings to taste medicinal and don’t like them.

If you aren’t putting them in a keg I would add them to primary after about a week and leave in for at least a week. You could also try frozen juice concentrate that would work too.

 

[BRohde]

I've done two blueberry wheats. Both good, but still tweaking the recipe. First one had 4lbs of fresh blueberries that I crushed and added to the secondary. Was really good, but blueberry flavor was very subtle.

Next batch I upped my blueberries to 7lbs and made a puree in my food processor and added to the secondary. Tasted good and I got the blueberry flavor and aroma I was looking for, but thinned the body out and it didn't have the traditional wheat beer characteristics. Next time I'll tweak to build some body back into it.

Those blueberry additions are for a 5g batches and both sat on the berries for 2 weeks. Dont use a traditional secondary carboy, the blueberries take up a lot of space.

 

[JimRausch]

You might not think so, but blueberries do lend a subtle flavor, unless you use a crap load of them. 3 lb of Maine wild blueberries (the most flavorful) in a 2G batch of an American Wheat gives a beautiful color, but a pretty mild blueberry flavor. Figuring that it was all the sugar being gone, this year I added 1/2 cup xylitol at bottling. Didn't help much. Still trying to figure it out. Personally, I've never seen a blueberry extract or tincture, but that may be because I'm right in the middle of the wild blueberry capital of the world. Fresh all the way baby!