Regular infusion mash, light belgian style witbier bill. Perle, IBU about 15. Wild forest raspberries in secondary, 200g/L. Yeast BLG201, our own.
OG 1057, final does not make much sense because with berries, but it’s 1008.
Very pronounced spices, hops, and raspberries, balanced! Apparently, berries accentuated the hops. Slightly tart, dangerously drinkable. Well carbonated naturally under a month.
So you just throw some berries in to secondary?
I will finally make my cherry beer next week (had a issue with strong ale so I didn’t had free fermenter), so I am interested in the use of berries.
My plan is to put some in primary and then put few in each bottle, because I don’t have the setup to bottle from keg.
Yes, it was fermented for a week or two before addition of berries, and about same time again on secondary. I do not use kegs at all, those are just glass jars with locks. Most simple gear. This gorgeous foam comes from just a bit of sugar priming on bottling.
Putting berries in primary is imo not very good approach: mostly because most of the flavor would bubble away, but also because there is somewhat higher contamination chance.
Do you freeze or sanatise the berries at all or just ride the wild yeast wave if it happens?
There is no chance anything would survive with fresh vigorous yeast and at high alcohol levels/low oxygen on secondary. I used to sanitize berries in my first attempts, but later found it to be unnecessary. I even boiled my first mead!
Sometimes I freeze berries though, but only to save them till beer is ready, or to promote conversion in cranberries or rowan.
I’ve staved off using fruit for those reasons but it’s good to hear from someone who’s done it that just dropping them in works just fine. Thanks
Looks lovely, congratulations! Amazing carbonation result too. I’m going to do a take on this one day, since we have raspberry all over too.




