Brewers best blueberry extract

[josh888]

Hello I have searched and found a lot to do with fruit extracts but nothing pertaining to my exact question. I'm shooting for a blueberry wheat and I ordered some blueberry extract in the mail. upon arrival the bottle had somehow cracked and leaked half of the contents and in a panic I just threw it in the secondary as I had already reracked it with some fresh berries a little earlier in the day. After dumping it in the fermenter I noticed the bottle said to add at bottling. This is my first time using fruit of any kind, did I just ruin a whole batch of beer?

 

[RM-MN]

Hello I have searched and found a lot to do with fruit extracts but nothing pertaining to my exact question. I'm shooting for a blueberry wheat and I ordered some blueberry extract in the mail. upon arrival the bottle had somehow cracked and leaked half of the contents and in a panic I just threw it in the secondary as I had already reracked it with some fresh berries a little earlier in the day. After dumping it in the fermenter I noticed the bottle said to add at bottling. This is my first time using fruit of any kind, did I just ruin a whole batch of beer?

No, you didn't ruin that batch. The extract is not fermentable so you won't really lose anything as long as the majority of the fermentation was done.

 

[josh888]

Ok thank you it was on day ten when I moved to secondary, so fermentation should of been done

 

[ACbrewer]

A brief (or not brief) science of fermenting digression -

the reason they tell you to put that in at the bottling, has to do with volatility. Different chemicals evaporate a different temps. (eg water at 212, Alcohol about 180). The flavors you taste have to become airborne to get into your nasal passage to be tasted. This can be helped by carbonation - which is why a flat beer just tastes WRONG! The bubbles as they pop help deliver the hop aromas into the nose. This is also why wine tasters can spit out afterward (wines are flat) but beer tasting requires consumption.

Anyhow you may read that 'the flavors are "very" or "highly" volatile' or 'are volatile at low temps' what this means is that as the temp goes up, the flavor will evaporate off. Additionally in an ferment, the flavors can be carried out with the CO2 of fermentation. Thus most flavor additives go in for that secondary fermentation when you are maybe going through a small say .05 delta gravity of sugar, not .30 gravity delta of a primary ferment. This is also why there is a discussion among mead makers about boiling honey (and removing some of the flavor through vigorous boil).

Thus ends the brief science of fermenting digression.