When to eat bilberries?

[Rabidbun]

Pretty much as the title says! They've got some dark lilac berries on them (started off almost white lilac) but I cannot find anywhere that describes at what point they are ready to eat as far as size or colour.

*eyes her bilberries hungrily*

I'll probably end up hating the taste or something!

[Flummery]

They go black when they're ready and the juice stains like blazes! They have an incomparable flavour though and make fabulous pies.

[bluemoon]

In one of those 'ain't that just typical' ways, bilberries are usually ready in the second week of August, which is when the local bilberry moors are also full of people with shotguns after the grouse, making bilberry picking one of the more dangerous forms of foraging. As Flummery says they go completely black and the juice stains everything it touches - including skin. I've always found the best time to eat them is as soon as you've picked them because they're really tiny and I've never collected enough to do more than stain an apple pie. My gran used to send us bilberry picking, we'd return with quarter of an inch in the bottom of a jam jar and denials about eating them as we picked were pointless, the evidence was all over our faces.

[Rabidbun]

Lol, thanks! Will keep my two year old from bringing them indoors then!

Hoping that I'll get enough for a (very small) pie next year - the plants are very young still, though I do have six due to an order error that saw me getting three free.

And I have a really bizarre mental image now of insane, berry stained bilberry pickers legging it through the moors between rows of grouse hunters!

[bluemoon]

And I have a really bizarre mental image now of insane, berry stained bilberry pickers legging it through the moors between rows of grouse hunters!

That isn't bizarre, that's pretty much a typical scene from my childhood.

[Rabidbun]

lol
...

[Buttie]

If you only have a few bilberries try adding them fresh to cake mix. They explode and give lovely patches of flavour.