Advice on Blueberry Hefeweizen

[pharaohpierre]

Hey guys,

I plan on brewing a blueberry flavored hefeweizen in a week and I could use some advice on the fruit addition. My base beer is going to be Northern Brewer's Bavarian Hefeweizen all grain recipe using Wyeast 3068 yeast. The boil hop addition is 1 ounce Tettnang at 60 minutes.

I'm decent at brewing but have never attempted a fruit beer before. I did a lot of research and I am pretty confident that I want to rack my beer to a secondary after fermentation stops and then add the blueberries. The chapter on fruit beers in "Designing Great Beers" by Ray Daniels helped to chart my course, However, this is where my lack of experience makes me nervous. I am looking at maybe 1.5 to 2 lbs of blueberries per gallon because supposedly, blueberries aren't that assertive of a flavor. At 5 gallons, that is a lot of blueberries and a lot of money to buy these blueberries.

Should I buy real blueberries and puree them? Should I purchase canned blueberries to save some dough? How many lbs do you think I need? How long should I age it for? I don't want a fruit forward beer as much as I want the blueberry notes to be mild and blend smoothly with the yeast notes.

Any advice would be helpful

 

[giraffe]

You need that much fruit, and its expensive. Id brew a regular hefe now and wait to brew this until june when blueberries are in season where you can go to a farm and buy 10 lbs of them cheaper/riper. You can use frozen, but its likely still going to be pricey. I generally just smash the well washed fruit and rack on top of it in a secondary. You may need to sanitize the fruit by some method, its your call, I generally dont and havent had a problem.

I wouldnt age it overly long as its a hefe base. A month tops.

 

[pharaohpierre]

Thx for the info. Yeah I was worried that I was going to need that much fruit. Maybe I'll take your suggestion and wait until the Summer to brew it. I'll keep an eye out for a good deal on blueberries in the meantime.

Do you think I should increase my hop amount because the 1 oz. is designed for the recipe without blueberries. If I add blueberries would it affect the overall perceived bitterness?

 

[giraffe]

The blueberries will add a bit of gravity/fermentables, not sweet per se. You could up it a couple ibus but i think you will be fine. Its a hefe and a fruit beer, its not going to be bitter anyways.

 

[Egs21eric]

I would boil frozen blueberries in a cup or two of water. Reduce the heck out of it and then strain well. Similar to how blueberry pancake syrup is made (1 part sugar, 4 parts blueberry) I would swap the sugar for 1/2 that amount of water. I actually just bought a 3 pound bag of frozen for $9 at walmart FYI.

 

[tagz]

I would boil frozen blueberries in a cup or two of water. Reduce the heck out of it and then strain well. Similar to how blueberry pancake syrup is made (1 part sugar, 4 parts blueberry) I would swap the sugar for 1/2 that amount of water. I actually just bought a 3 pound bag of frozen for $9 at walmart FYI.

Generally people advise against boiling fruit.

 

[Egs21eric]

Generally people advise against boiling fruit.

Interesting, may I ask why? I have seen both arguments to this one. Obviously creating a blueberry puree will turn this hef 100% blue in color however you will get the best all around natural blueberry flavor into the end product. The high heat will also kill 100% of the wild yeast and microbes that are present, not so much with frozen, but definitely fresh blueberries. Another reason why a lot of people seem to add fruit at flame out.

The typical argument is that boiling fruit will release pectin that may haze your beer, this would be an issue for a kristallweizen but not a hefeweizen. Right?

Curious myself.

 

[tagz]

Yeah, the pectin is the main issue I have heard. I haven't done it myself but I'd be worried about ending up with a muddy (not just hazy) beer. This is from brewwiki:

Boil - Only a few fruits are good for boiling. Most fruit should never be boiled and should not be added to primary fermentation. Boiling fruit can destroy it's enzymes and can cause it to release pectin. Citris and citris rinds can sometimes be boiled while berries should never be boiled. Berries particularly can cause beer to get a pickle flavor, which can taste like rotten fruit or bitter olives. Boiling and adding to secondary fermentation can cloud up a brew. An alternative is adding the fruit to the boil is to add after the wort has been removed from heat, scalding the fruit at 190f for at least 45sec (88c)

 

[Transamguy77]

i just did a blueberry ale, I was going to get raspberries but they didn't have any frozen at my local Costco so I got blueberries. I added them after they defrosted and smashed them up while they were still in the bag, I bought a 3lb bag and added them to 4 gallons that I just kegged. It's been a week and it has just a hint of blueberry flavor but it is a beautiful purple color. I'm going to let it sit another week or so before I try it again.

The beer i added it to did have a late hop addition but it was a low alpha 4% so it doesn't have an big impact on flavor, I was not planing to add fruit to it when I brewed it and if I did i would have left out the late hop addition.

 

[Egs21eric]

Yeah, after thinking about it I would probably mash the blueberries up well and add them at flame out to ensure that wild yeast gets obliterated, then strain the 10 million blueberry seeds out before pitching.

 

[pharaohpierre]

I never did think about the blueberry seeds. Should i put the blueberries in a muslin bag to help keep the seeds trapped?

 

[Egs21eric]

Worth a shot. Or as long as you fave a fine strainer it won't be an issue.

 

[pharaohpierre]

Ok, so I'm brewing the blueberry hefeweizen now. It's been in the fermenter for around 3 days now. I actually plan on bottling 2 gallons of the basic hefe recipe because I want some of that in my fridge and then adding the blueberries to the other 3 gallons. My question is should I rack into a 3 gallon secondary or a 5 gallon secondary? I ask this because I know that the yeast is going to ferment some of the blueberries and I need some head space for that. Thoughts?