Making Blueberry Beer

[BeantownR6]

im bored so thought i would share some photos.

skipping ahead to after fermenting the beer, i added crushed camden tablets to kill the yeast days before racking onto blueberries.

pasteurize 5 lbs of frozen blueberries

drain liquid

smooshed up in sanitized freezer bag

rack from pimary to secondary

in the secondary for 2 more weeks, then cold crashed and kegged

its got a nice color and i add a scoop of blueberries to the beer. its not overpowering at all , nice refreshing blueberry beer this is a winner!

 

[Reno_eNVy]

Looks delicious. Is it overly sweet considering the campden?

 

[BeantownR6]

no its not very sweet at all. its more tart, but i used the white labs east coast ale yeast which could contribute to that i think.

i broke my hydrometer so i didn't get to take a gravity reading when it was done fermenting or on the blueberries. but im off to the lhbs this weekend i guess i can check it from the keg.

 

[beninan]

So did you put the smooshed blueberries into the beer when pouring it into a glass? Or did you put the blueberries into the secondary? The writeup isn't fully clear I guess. Does it have a nice blueberry flavor? I'm very curious about this. I brewed up a 1 gallon test batch recently of a blueberry wheat, and after hearing a lot about blueberry flavor fermenting out, I doubt I achieved anything more than color from the berries. And after taste testing it somewhat-halfway through, I didn't taste any blueberry.

 

[BeantownR6]

the smooshed blueberries went into the secondary. when i pour a glass, i have new blueberries i put in just for fun. they float up and down and are tasty after the beer is gone. i used the campden tablets to kill the yeast so the blueberries didn't ferment. the flavor is there, its faint and not overpowering. i used frozen blueberries cause the price of 5 lbs would have been too expensive. im sure fresh berries would have been better.

beninan since your from maine, you may have been to boston beer works, that is where i got the idea cause im from boston. they say they use fresh maine blueberries and if i lived out there i would go pick 5lbs. when i was a kid i used to pick the small wild ones.

 

[beninan]

I actually used Wyman's Maine frozen blueberries for that batch. I added them at the last 5 minutes of the boil to help kill anything growing in them, and they were added straight to the primary. I wouldn't be surprized if there is no blueberry influence at all because of the boil and the primary fermenting, but it was only a test batch after all. I guess I'll have to make another batch of this add the blueberry at secondary, after stabilizing the beer, and compare the results.