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Blueberry Ale

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akueck

akueck

Certified Mead Mentor
Certified Mead Mentor
Jun 26, 2006
4,958
11
0
Ithaca, NY
No real defined base style here, so it's just "Ale". Hope it works, it's my friend's "hooray for passing the prelim exam" beer.

Blueberry Ale--aiming for final yield 3 gallons.
1/3 lb crystal 10
1/2 lb white wheat malt
1/3 lb dextrin malt/carapils
1/2 lb American 2-row
3 lbs dry light extract
1/2 oz Hallertau 50 mins
1/4 oz Hallertau 20 mins
zest of 1 meyer lemon ~5 mins
US-05 yeast
----for secondary----
6 lbs blueberries, frozen
zest of 2-3 lemons

Grains steeped at 140-150 for 30 mins and 155-157 for 20 mins. Standard brew day. Kettle volume was 3.5 gallons, 3 gallons made it to the fermenter. Forgot to take the OG (oops), but it should be around 1.048. Pitched at 72ºF. Will transfer to secondary next weekend with the fruit and hope it doesn't blow up like my last fruit beer. ;)
 
Brrr!! It gets cold in CA, who knew? The poor beer is sitting in the warmest part of the house, which is 58 now (the rest of the house was only 53 when we got home tonight). Fermentation is going, but slowly. Might wait 2 weeks for the primary to do its thing before adding the fruit.
 
Racked today onto 6 lbs of blueberries plus the zest of 2 small Meyer lemons. Total volume is now about 3.5 gallons and it's in a 6.5 gallon carboy. I'm hoping it doesn't explode. ;)

Still very chilly here. The beer was 57º when I took it out of the cave to rack it. Should have made a blueberry steam beer!
 
akueck said:
Racked today onto 6 lbs of blueberries plus the zest of 2 small Meyer lemons.
Click to expand...

How did you treat the berries and lemon?

Curious, why did you use the carapils?

For such a low gravity beer I would think that adding the fruit to the primary would have been a better method, then you could rack-off the fruit into a secondary for clearing/conditioning...Just my opinion...I've made a blueberry wheat that turned out pretty good that way.

In any case good luck!
 
Well, we took the berries, opened the bag, and poured them in. ;D Didn't even bother defrosting them first since in my experience that makes a much bigger mess and doesn't really do much good.

The lemons were washed and zested. Then we threw the zest in. FWIW, the lemons were "organic" in that they came from a friend's backyard tree. I've used them before in many things with good (or great!) results.

My last fruit beer was a bit on the thin side. The carapils should add a little body. Hopefully....I think I added them last time too.

I don't do a secondary for most beers, I just let them clear up in primary. I chose to put the fruit in secondary to hopefully keep the most amount of fruity aroma as possible, since that sort of thing tends to blow off more during primary. Also, fruit makes for a violent and explosive fermentation (in my experience), so doing it separately make it a little less messy. Of course, when it's sitting at 57º it's pretty slow regardless, so that's probably not as relevant during the winter.
 
akueck said:
Well, we took the berries, opened the bag, and poured them in.
Click to expand...

You are definitely a braver man than I...I would be terrified of spoiling a batch without first treating the fruit, especially considering the time invested, not to mention the ingredients.

Good luck with it...in any case it sounds yummy.
 
I've done it several times, so far so good. It helps a little that it's in the secondary too, since the yeast is definitely the dominant organism at that point and there's a few percent alcohol to ward off some of the nasties. Though I've done fruit in primary that had just been plucked off a tree and washed, which worked like a charm too.

This poor batch is still very cold and going rather slowly at this point. I set it out of the cave near a heater for a few hours. Bubbled like mad as the air in the headspace warmed up. ;) But I think I did get it slightly warmer and activity seems to have picked up a little bit. Smells like wonderful, can't wait to taste it.
 
Getting warmer here finally. Gravity check yesterday: 1.016. Still bubbling, so I'll check it again next week. Tastes great! Very blueberry.
 
SG 1.007

Activity is tailing off and this is about where I expect it to finish, so bottling will be scheduled for next weekend. Tastes noticeably less sweet and thinner than last tasting, but much more blueberry. In fact, the taste is not much like beer, though it smells similar to some of the fruit-included Russian River beers I've had. Let's hope that doesn't mean this one has gone wild. :o
 
Bottled with 1.75 oz corn sugar (target 2.6 volumes CO2), yield 31 12oz bottles.

Pressed out the berries as well, and the results are sitting in a jug under airlock. Not really sure what to do with this, looks like a cup or two of actual liquid plus a bunch of crud.

Will update in a few weeks with the final results.
 
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