Beer Forum

We have an abundance of incredible smelling/tasting blackberries around our home. Anyone have a good recipe they've used blackberries in? I've already got two sour beers aging and my wife won't like me taking more long term storage space for another so anything like that isn't an option but I'm curious if anyone has had any success with blackberries. Thanks in advance.

Is mead a possibility?

I just made a blackberry tripel for a buddy's wedding. 14lbs Pilsner, 4lbs wheat, 2lbs Turbinado Sugar or light candi sugar (or syrup), 1oz Amarillo (FWH), 1oz Saaz (10 min), WLP530.

mash at 151 and 90min boil. Add 5lbs blackberries to secondary (1per gallon).

I would say mead too, but that would be a long term storage item. I would just throw 4-8 lbs in the secondary of a good wheat beer. Maybe something like 60% wheat, 40% 2 row with around 24 IBU's of Halletauer and a Wyeast 1010. You could always throw them in the primary too or half and half.

I found myself in a similar situation 2 years ago. My dad had tons of blackberries and he hadn't started making blackberry wine yet (Now I can't get any blackberries from him!!!!!) I tried to use blackberries in a wit (I used 2lbs. in secondary), and I got mixed response. In my opinion, the tartness of the blackberries didn't go well with the belgian fruit flavors produced by the WY3942 yeast. I think a blackberry lambic would be good, but you said you don't want to tie up another carboy for so long. How about a blackberry stout? Hmmm.... I might try one myself if I can coax my dad into giving up some blackberries again.

There are some killer blackberry porter recipes out there. It is funny I stumble upon this today... I just picked a few pounds of blackberries with my wife and am planning on brewing one of the porter recipes this weekend.