Fruit beer. How to add the fruit

[gravid]

I just picked 10kg (22 pound) of blueberries.
So i thought of adding this to a beer. But how should I add it?

Should i heat it up? Should i add something to kill the yeast, and let the berries add the sugar for the beer? What style of beer should I brew? Should I add it to the mash? Or in the boil?
I also got other kind of fruit, like plub, ribes and aronia. Should I try making a blend?

Sorry if this is confusing, but it is confusing to me.

 

[tally350z]

Bottling or kegging?

 

[EtchyLives]

I had a lot of success before with cranberries when I boiledthe cranberries in water until they "popped", then stirred the water and burst cranberries together. Then I did a reduction and put the resulting cranberry sauce into the secondary. Lots of flavor with only a little bit of fruit, plus it had been cooked long enough where I was not very concerned about contamination.

Just make sure that you leave the berries in secondary long enough for the yeast to ferment the rest of the sugars. Especially with a relatively high sugar-content fruit like blueberries.

 

[Transamguy77]

I did a blueberry ale earlier this year and I used 3lbs of frozen blueberries that I defrosted then smashed and dumped into a muslin bag and dropped into a keg. It was a simple blond ale.

From what I read it is not good to boil your fruits because it releases the pectic enzymes and can cause hazy beer. If you freeze them the berries will swell and split the skin so once they defrost the juice and sugar will naturally come out. I would wash them in star San before freezing.

 

[Calder]

Just make sure that you leave the berries in secondary long enough for the yeast to ferment the rest of the sugars. Especially with a relatively high sugar-content fruit like blueberries.

No fruits, with the obvious exceptions of grapes and apples (and probably a few similar ones), have high sugar content. Most are around 10%. Blueberries are 11% (per the reference I have), which means 1 lb of berries will add around 11% of a pound of sugar (or roughly the equivalent of adding 2 ozs of table sugar).

 

[2005STi]

Freeze them and add them to secondary for 5-8 days. This is the only time I secondary. I've done a peach wit twice (wyeast 3944) and it has turned out phenomenal both times. The peach is lightly in the background (6lbs per 5 gal.).

I'd go with the same weight maybe up to 8 for another lightly flavored fruit like blueberry. I would maybe even do a quick star san rinse before freezing since yours were hand picked.