Adding Blackberries to a beer question.

[Alex.mc]

Morning all,

I am collecting Blackberries with a plan to making a Blackberry Wiessbeer. I have all the ingredients for a plain AG Weiss, but am wondering about the blackbeery addition and the treatment of them.
My vague plan led by what I've read here and there is to collect the Blackberries, freeze them and them defrost and wash them, then put them all in a pan and gently bring them to a boil of some sort, then put the whole lot into the wort at day 4-5 of fermentation in a sanitised mesh bag to keep the bits together. Then rack to bottle after 2 weeks fermation.

Dies this sound reasonable? Any suggestions? Any massive errors? Anyone brewed with Blackberries and have some sage advice?

Many thanks.

 

[divrack]

Sounds reasonable. There are other ways. Some would just Chuck them in frozen after conditioning for a week. Depends on storage etc whether the chance of infection is too high.
Cooking changes the flavour of fruit quite quickly. I've heard of bathing the whole fruit in starsan.
For what it's worth I wouldn't mind a bit of wild funk in a weiss and would wack em in for a week then rack to keg and chill. Would be drunk before any spoil would occur. If you're keeping it maybe not.

 

[Sadfield]

This is my go to advice on using fruit. http://www.port66.co.uk/fruit-additions/

Pasteurizing at 80c, as outlined, worked well in a Raspberry beer I brewed, retaining the sharp flavour. I have recently brewed two beers with fruit (blackberries and Gooseberries) which worked quite well. Frozen, then defrosted, pureed and added to the boil with 2 minutes to go. I think, as long as the temperature is low, or high for a very short time, there isn't too much alteration of the flavour, in my experience.

 

[Alex.mc]

Thanks guys, I've collected 1.3kg in about an hour, so I'll whack them in the freezer now. There are literally thousands still on the canes that are waiting to ripen, so I might split off a part of the wort and do a very small batch with unwashed blackberries in! I've been drinking some nice Lambics recently and also reading the Yeast book, so I'm interested to see what happens. Having the remaining wort split between plain Wiess and Blackberry Wiess will be an interesting experiment and I can afford to have a few bottles be drain cleaner if need be. I guess If I get lucky though I'll be bemaoning not making more!

 

[Drunkula]

Some would just Chuck them in frozen after conditioning for a week.

I did that and ended up with a sour that tasted nothing like a beer and every bottle is a gusher. I'd do the pasteurisation if I did it again as mentioned above.

I don't know if all sours basically strip out any taste of malt. If they do I don't see the point of wasting barley on them.

 

[divrack]

I did that and ended up with a sour that tasted nothing like a beer and every bottle is a gusher. I'd do the pasteurisation if I did it again as mentioned above.

I don't know if all sours basically strip out any taste of malt. If they do I don't see the point of wasting barley on them.

Personally I don't see the point in wasting barley on fruit beer unless It's sour. Or some kind of diastaticus yeast, but thats just my taste..
I would heartily recommend a trip to the lambic section of a very good beer shop, preferably in Belgium with a couple of fifties in your pocket to see what all the fuss is about.
Most of the hipster attempts at sours aren't worth the bother though. Burning sky and kernel do some good ones. Magic rock do a good gose.

 

[Llamaman]

Wild Beer Co.

 

[divrack]

Wild Beer Co.

wild beer co have released some beautiful beer, but also some stinkers in my opinion. ill only buy them if i can taste a bit first. had one from them that was indistinguishable from a spoiled batch i made, but had one recently, some kind of wild flower sour wheat i think, that was delicious. i think thats why great sour is so hard and expensive, because a lot of the trully lambic stuff ends up chucked and you need a lot to blend into the really great ones. the uk brewers i mentioned make some interesting sour stuff, but its like a cartoon compared to Dostoevsky when you have a good true lambic.. sadly i cant bear to shell out 20 quid a bottle very often however...

 

[peebee]

Doesn't have to be a sour. Okay, this is elderberry not blackberry, and certainly isn't a "Weiss":

https://www.williamsbrosbrew.com/beer/ebulum

 

[patwestlake]

Wild beer do some great beers - Tepache, Modus and Smoke 'n Barrels are great examples (to me) of where beer can go if you stray from the Bible, go through Randy Mosher and out the other side! Ok, there are a few I'm not keen on, but when you get something as brilliant as Tom Yum Gose, you have to stand back and applaud! If I can achieve something along these lines by using the yeast on picked fruit, I'm game!!