Blackberry Wheat

[EvanAltman36]

So in an effort to share my hobby with my wife, I asked her what she'd like to brew. She had recently tried, and enjoyed, a blackberry wheat beer from a local brewery, so that settled that. I've got a recipe put together and I'm going to be using natural blackberry puree, available from LHBS. From what I understand, it's best to add that to the primary, but I'm wondering whether to add to the fermentor once the wort goes in, or whether I add it after primary fermentation. Or, do I put in secondary and rack onto it?

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

this is the same for everything, in the boil can possibly boil it away, if its sugar yeast will eat it and loose most of if not all the flavor, if its not sugar it can stunt the yeast a little, also if its sugar in the secondary, the yeast might wake up or the beer could taste too sweet.

Thats why most flavors are done as late as possible I know this doesn't answer the question, but its your call

 

[LarryBrewer]

Fruit is usually added to the secondary to retain as much of the flavor as possible. Boil destroys the flavors, and during fermentation yeast can scrub away the flavors.

Just make sure it is pasteurized, pasteurize it yourself (heating on the stove) or look up the use of campden tablets. Fruit can contain wild bugs and they need to be neutralized. Your LHBS will know the best approach.

Don't go with fruit extract, always go with real fruit. Fruit extract tastes fake and so will any beer made with it.

 

[Nosybear]

I'd go with secondary as well. You want to either use canned puree (sterile) or pasteurize your berries (keep them at 170° for at least a half-hour to kill any spores and wild yeast they're carrying). Extract will give you the flavor of blackberry pop - fermented fruit doesn't taste like the fruit, think of wine! And add them while there are yeast still in suspension - early in secondary, a couple of days in if you're doing an ale. You'll get a second fermentation as the yeast eat up the sugars in the fruit so be prepared for possible gumming up of the airlock. Another option is to dump the fruit into the wort at flame-out and hold off for at least 10 minutes on cooling but this gives a bit of a cooked fruit flavor. All things equal, I shell out for puree, it's much easier.

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

I'm not advising you to do this, I'm not a stranger to experimentation but this is what I would do, heat it up to pasteurize, mix it with something to turn it into a liquid, add small amounts to the finished beer, mix well until it taste right, then keg it as soon as possible and put a large amount of C02 to vent the oxygen you just added while string it, vent this several times then carb as usual and if wanted bottle from the keg

 

[EvanAltman36]

The link to the product is below, but it's commercially sterilized real fruit puree with the seeds removed. That said, sounds like the best thing to do is to create the wort and ferment as usual, then add fruit to secondary vessel and rack onto that. How long in secondary?

And then a follow-up: fermentation creates all the fun fallout at the bottom and I obviously avoid as much trub as possible when I rack to keg. But the fruit will obviously be heavier than the beer itself, but will it sort of naturally mix together? And then would I want to rack to keg and collect as much residual fruit as possible, or will that simply clog things up?

http://www.greatfermentations.com/Orego ... info/3340/

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

adding to the secondary will work fine just be very careful not to splash or foam while stirring, it most likely will drop allot of the solids to the bottom, just use your auto-siphon to miss as much as possible.
You could even pull out some beer in a jug, mix it together then slowly pour it back in

 

[EvanAltman36]

adding to the secondary will work fine just be very careful not to splash or foam while stirring, it most likely will drop allot of the solids to the bottom, just use your auto-siphon to miss as much as possible.
You could even pull out some beer in a jug, mix it together then slowly pour it back in

Sorry for the noob questions, just never used secondary before. Better to rack beer and then add fruit, or vice versa?

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

the secondary is used to do 2 things, settle out the solids even more than the primary and or add flavors, so if you use one be very careful to sanitize and not add oxygen, with that said a week is normal unless its a high gravity beer and make sure its as cool as possible to not allow contamination

I personally only use my secondary because my fermenter is too big to fit in the keezer so I split it up into 2 - 6.5 gallon pales and cold crash the beer for 4 days at 2 celsius

 

[EvanAltman36]

So then, could I simply add the fruit to primary after its been fermenting about a week, then leave like that for a week? If there is no discernably better result from secondary, I'd just as soon avoid it. I would imagine waking up the yeast would force out added O2 with CO2, right?

I'm really anal about this stuff, as you can probably tell. But I want SWMBO to enjoy it and work with me, so I want to make sure it turns out well.

I had typed the earlier stuff then found this:
"After the main fermentation is complete, add to either the primary, or rack and add to secondary. No difference in the two. That would be adding it somewhere between 7 and 14 days after pitching yeast. It will wake the yeast up again."

So if the only merit of secondary is clarity, I'll just keep it in primary and cold crash prior to kegging.

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

the real difference is you would have no trub in the secondary and less yeast and it should be clearer overall when done because you auto siphon off twice, but in the last part of the primary is fine too just might need to wait longer no biggie

 

[EvanAltman36]

Just added the blackberry puree to secondary vessel and racked beer onto that; that was Saturday at around 10am. After about 6 hours, I got some decent bubbling, but nothing over the top. Never got crazy aggressive, and now has slowed down significantly. I'm going to pull a sample tonight to see where the flavor's at and may dry hop as well, maybe 7-10 days. If I can keg by the 14th, it should be carbed up just in time for Thanksgiving.