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Bluewave recipe
After reading the message about blueberry beer, I figured I would post mine. This was originally the Ruby Ale clone that didn't quite turn out right. I swapped the raspberries for blueberries, and did some slight modifications to the recipe. This was brewed last summer, given to a few coworkers, and taken to a housewarming party. Only one person didn't like it. 2 kegs were gone in about a week.
10 gallon all grain
19# 2 row pale, 2# crystal 40L, 1# carapils for body and head retention
2 oz Mt Hood 5.1% AA @ 60, nothing else
10# blueberries
Wyeast 1318 and 1098 in different fermenters
I was aiming for a strike of 148F to have a somewhat light body, but ended with 152F.
OG = 1.050
Both batches ended up with an FG of 1.006, ABV of 5.7%
I boiled all the blueberries in about a half gallon of water for roughly 5 minutes, cooled down, added to secondary, racked beer over top. I was very pleased with how hazy it turned out.
As usual, I experiment with different lower AA hops and yeast.
I was searching the site for a blueberry ale and came across this one and I think I will convert it to extract and brew it up pretty soon, but I had some questions.
"I boiled all the blueberries in about a half gallon of water for roughly 5 minutes, cooled down, added to secondary, racked beer over top. I was very pleased with how hazy it turned out."
When you add this to secondary, are you adding just the water from the boil, or the blueberries with the water and all?
Also, when racking from secondary into a bottle filling bucket, do you get separated fruit particles coming through the siphon if you did indeed add the blueberries themselves to secondary?
I read that if you dont boil or cook the blueberries the flavor dissipates quickly. Never tried it because my blueberry bushes are worthless. Anyone know if thats true?
vinyalwhl wrote:
I read that if you dont boil or cook the blueberries the flavor dissipates quickly. Never tried it because my blueberry bushes are worthless. Anyone know if thats true?
In my experience the skins of blueberries are pretty tough, you really need to boil them, freeze them, or crush them to get the innards exposed to the beer. I like usinf frozen blueberries.
As for the cooking "stabilizing" or intesifying the flavor, I am not sure... sorry.
I made a batch of blueberry wheat last summer with five pounds of blueberries in it and definitely did not boil them. It was a very dark purple color and was best in the first couple months but I wouldn't say the flavor dissipated. Just changed quicker than most beers, but I believe this is the case with almost all fruit beers and wheat beers too. I also made a blueberry wheat using extract and even though I generally don't like using extract it turned out pretty good. This year I think I'll go with 2-3 lbs. blueberries (frozen) and a small amount of extract. The extract gives it more of a "blueberry muffin" flavor and no real color change, but the fruit seemed to give it a creamy mouthfeel.
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