Rotting Strawberries? Can that happen?

So this flavor of my beer has caused psychological problems. Think of a woman you once loved dumped you or cheated on you, and it in turned has caused you to hate all women... that's kind of like where I'm at. I seriously can't shake the thought of how this beer tastes. It makes me not want beer ever again. But now that a few days have past I'm starting to do much better, but man that taste is like a thorn in my side.

I made a blonde ale that I racked to secondary on top of 6lbs of strawberries. The strawberries were fresh, chopped up, frozen and then thawed. After 6 days I removed the strawberries, which were a grayish color now, however the smell wasn't all that different from regular strawberries. I didn't taste the beer at this point but I did taste it before the strawberries were added. It was pretty darn good.

Well, after the bottles conditioned and I refrigerated a couple, I started to drink them. The taste was tolerable at first, but got worst. And by worst I mean that I started to notice it more and more. I've never tasted a rotten strawberry before but I think this is what happened.

Is it possible for the fruit to rot in your beer and transfer that rotten fruit taste over into it? I've never tasted anything like this before but it is just horrible. It doesn't make me physically sick, just mentally sick. I have no plans of dumping it out anytime soon.

Can fruit rot while it's in your beer?!

Fruit will not rot while in the beer. The alcohol prevents this.

How long have the bottles been conditioning?

Sometimes it takes a long time for the flavor to come out, be patient. My brother made a pumpkin beer that tasted like burning tires for almost two months after bottling but after that, it was the best pumpkin beer I have ever tasted.

Toga said:

Fruit will not rot while in the beer. The alcohol prevents this.

How long have the bottles been conditioning?

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Up until this point about 3 weeks. When I tried the first samples that tasted like a butt maybe 10 days.

Let it sit for another week or longer to further condition before trying it again. Some brews simply take longer to condition. For the most part a horrible beer if let sit to condition will turn out good over time. I had one I brewed up near the end of last summer. It was drinkable but not what it should have been (brewed this one many times before)............I let it sit until a month ago sampling a beer here and there. I downed one of the last 6 bottles last night and it was awesome.

this is scary and disturbing thread for me to discover. I just chopped up and froze 3 lbs of fresh strawberries yesterday so I can later rack 5 gal of Belgian Blond on top. Now I really start to wonder. May be I should just add strawberry/kiwi juice to my beer instead of fresh fruit.

Were your strawberries rotten or started to spoil before you added them? May be over rippen? I really don't want to waste 5 gal of perfectly fine Belgian Blonde

Toga said:

Fruit will not rot while in the beer. The alcohol prevents this.

How long have the bottles been conditioning?

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Sure it does! Maybe not rot in the sense of bacteria eating it, but certainly it will break down and decompose. I usually rack my wines off of the fruit in 5 days or so, for that reason. If the strawberries lost their color and turned into a gray mush, I'd say that process was pretty far along.

Yooper said:

Sure it does! Maybe not rot in the sense of bacteria eating it, but certainly it will break down and decompose. I usually rack my wines off of the fruit in 5 days or so, for that reason. If the strawberries lost their color and turned into a gray mush, I'd say that process was pretty far along.

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They weren't mush just yet, but they definitely lost there color. sh*t sh*t sh*t sh*t sh*t I had such high hopes for this beer. Had I known this is even a possibility, I would of used strawberry extract. All those threads about adding fruit to beer doesn't mention this. I could've even pureed them.

The strawberries were bought fresh, chopped, and frozen all within a few hours. They froze in the freezer for about 3 days. Added them to beer after an overnight thaw.

DAMNIT. Doesn't make me feel any better that I've drank rotten strawberry beer. I should toss it just for the sake of revenge against the strawberries. F*ck me and the horse I rode in on. I'm getting drunk tonight. But I ain't touching the rotten strawberry blonde.

Yooper said:

Sure it does! Maybe not rot in the sense of bacteria eating it, but certainly it will break down and decompose. I usually rack my wines off of the fruit in 5 days or so, for that reason. If the strawberries lost their color and turned into a gray mush, I'd say that process was pretty far along.

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so you suggest to take them earlier off the berries? I really don't want to be in OP shoes, I now think I should avoid fresh fruit and add juice

paraordnance said:

so you suggest to take them earlier off the berries? I really don't want to be in OP shoes, I now think I should avoid fresh fruit and add juice

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I'm guessing that the temperature was probably fairly warm, to break down that fast. In my experience, at 65 degrees, fruit breaks down a bit more slowly but I've never left fruit in my wine (don't make fruit beer) more than about 5 days.

Yooper said:

I'm guessing that the temperature was probably fairly warm, to break down that fast. In my experience, at 65 degrees, fruit breaks down a bit more slowly but I've never left fruit in my wine (don't make fruit beer) more than about 5 days.

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Yeah it was fairly warm. Is it forever rotted and ruined? I should of put it in the fridge. This is definitely my first failure. The taste of this stuff is hard to forget.

I just did the same thing with the same results (6lbs strawberries to my blonde). The blonde was very good before racking on top of the fruit, but after one week in a keg it is undrinkable. I put the keg aside to try later and hopefully it will get better.

People usually give way too much credit to alcohol.
What's the %ABV of your beers? 5%? 6%? That's not enough alcohol to even kill baker's yeast, let alone the wild yeast and bacteria that might be present on the fruit.

On the other hand, wine is rotten fruit, and beer is rotten grain. I'm fairly certain that your beers can be salvaged (not to be what you initially intended them to be, but hopefully to be good enough to drink without throwing up).

What I would do is put the beer back in the fermenter, and pitch some strong yeast on it, so the strawberry juice has a chance to ferment, and become strawberry wine. I would personally use Pasteur Champagne, as it's the strongest, most sugar thirsty yeast I know.
I think that should take care of your rotten flavor, in exchange, of course, for a little more alcohol.

Inodoro_Pereyra said:

What I would do is put the beer back in the fermenter, and pitch some strong yeast on it, so the strawberry juice has a chance to ferment, and become strawberry wine. I would personally use Pasteur Champagne, as it's the strongest, most sugar thirsty yeast I know.
I think that should take care of your rotten flavor, in exchange, of course, for a little more alcohol.

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It's good to be optimistic, but I don't think this is going to improve much.

I mean, I make a ton of wine (I'm more of a winemaker than brewer) and I never, ever, not once, used rotten fruit to make a wine. You use only the best fruit you can. Bad flavor now is not going to make a good wine.

It's true that the rotten flavor may improve, or at least not get worse, with a bit of time. But you can not make good wine from a bad beginning.

I agree it's probably not gonna become particularly "good" (although with yeast you never know), but, at this point, I think if it ended being drinkable, that'd be a big improvement.
After all, what does he have to lose? A batch of beer he can't drink?

Inodoro_Pereyra said:

I agree it's probably not gonna become particularly "good" (although with yeast you never know), but, at this point, I think if it ended being drinkable, that'd be a big improvement.
After all, what does he have to lose? A batch of beer he can't drink?

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Good point!

Sh*t sh*t sh*t I'm so pissed off at this point... I'll just toss it and pretend I never made this blunder. It'll really save me the explanation to people who see 50 bottled beers sitting in the house. The taste of that crap haunts my dreams. Sheesh. If anyone is in my area and wants to taste this for themselves, I can meet you at one of the two LHBSs. Bring good beer to clean your palate afterwards.

Thanks you guys.

gregger said:

Sh*t sh*t sh*t I'm so pissed off at this point... I'll just toss it and pretend I never made this blunder. It'll really save me the explanation to people who see 50 bottled beers sitting in the house. The taste of that crap haunts my dreams. Sheesh. If anyone is in my area and wants to taste this for themselves, I can meet you at one of the two LHBSs. Bring good beer to clean your palate afterwards.

Thanks you guys.

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that's what i thought i would do as soon as i read your original post. sometimes the battle is lost and it's best to just move on to the next one. like someone else pointed out the alcohol in a beer is not enough to preserve fruit so it did decompose in there. flavor matters to me more than any one batch of beer, or any other thing i eat or drink for that matter.

I just made a strawberry cream ale and left the fruit in secondary for 8 days. I tasted it at bottling and it tasted fine, but the strawberries had been leeched of color as well. If I remember this thread I'll post my results after I drink a few.

I bottled this batch on May 25th, so I won't crack one open for a few more weeks.

I just pulled the Strawberries out of my second batch of Blonde. I used fresh frozen no suger added berries. I put 4 lbs. in primary after 7 days and let them sit for another 7. I then move (today) to secondary for another 7 then keg. They are bleached of all color when taken out. They are supposed to be this is normal. I will report how this batch turns out as it got warm a few times during conditioning. The fermentation was done before it got to 76 but the berries were in it. The first batch I did came out great with just the right amount of flavor. I toned the ABV down for this round though as the first was a little high for the summer season :cross:. Tastes great right now but that can change.

I realize that several people have already chimed in and I agree with Yooper...but I would like to add my 2 cents...I hope that the OP froze the strawberries to crystalize the sugar molecules in the beery, so that it would maximize extraction, versus freezing them with the thought that it kills bacteria (freezing only stops bacteria growth, it will start back up when thawed).
When brewing a strawberry flavored beer, I would recommend going with strawberry extract or with a Belgium yeast...extract will give you a good strawberry taste and Belgium Yeast will bring out the sweetness of the real berry.
As for the berries turning white after fermentation, this is normal and should be expected...a strawberry gets its color from sugars combining with a chemical in them called anthocyanins...when you remove the sugar from the berry, the chemical turns gray.
Finally I would recommend reading an article in BYO (especially the tips for homebrewers section) it's about fruit beer and will give you some great tips: http://byo.com/stories/beer-styles/article/indices/11-beer-styles/681-fruit-beer-style-of-the-month

Sounds rough friend made Strawberry Lambic took 2years to be drinkable (more then one) if yours tastes that bad know how you feel once made Spruce Beer wished tastebuds would die

Well, I'll just let it sit. The thought of storing beer a VERY long time is kind of not the reason I got into brewing. I've never gone longer than 2 months, but then again, this is the first time I've ever had a "mistake" or off flavor.

I just don't see this taste clearing up though. Not sure what I did wrong but oh well. It was my first time using fresh strawberries and if it could be done, I'll figure out a way, but for now, I'll just do purees and extracts. No biggie. I'll put the 5 gallons of bottled beer in the closet and hopefully I'll forget about until winter.

One thing, in my experience, is that you generally want to flash pasteurize your fruit prior to adding it to the fermenter. I've made fruit beers a few times, and generally the process I use is to chop, freeze, and then flash pasteurize to thaw. Bringing the fruit up to 160 degrees in a quart or two of water and holding for 5-10 minutes will kill most of the baddies on the fruit. Dump the fruit and water into the fermenter and rack the beer ontop.

As far as your off flavor, it might be some form of infection. Let it sit a few more weeks and see where it's at. If it gets better, hooray. If it doesn't, dump it. Even if you dump the majority, I'd save a couple bottles and try it again in 6-12 months. You never know where it will be. Might end up amazing after a year of aging.

*Edit* I also want to mention that I've aged beer on fruit for 3 weeks, all the way up to 6 months on some sliced peaches... So fruit will definitely break down in the beer, but it won't rot in the traditional sense if you flash pasteurize.

gregger said:

They weren't mush just yet, but they definitely lost there color. sh*t sh*t sh*t sh*t sh*t I had such high hopes for this beer. Had I known this is even a possibility, I would of used strawberry extract. All those threads about adding fruit to beer doesn't mention this. I could've even pureed them.

The strawberries were bought fresh, chopped, and frozen all within a few hours. They froze in the freezer for about 3 days. Added them to beer after an overnight thaw.

DAMNIT. Doesn't make me feel any better that I've drank rotten strawberry beer. I should toss it just for the sake of revenge against the strawberries. F*ck me and the horse I rode in on. I'm getting drunk tonight. But I ain't touching the rotten strawberry blonde.

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Please don't ever use strawberry extract! You did fine, and I'm sure the strawberries may not even be directly to blame...I'd be with some of the others...give it some more time. If it still sucks to your palate in another few weeks, you can dump it then, but quite frankly, the way you made your beer is how I've always done it (add fruit after the primary and age for a week or so). I wish was local so I could try what you're feeling is so bad...even if you don't get any takers from HBT, you should take your brew to the LHBS to see if one of the local experts could help pinpoint what off flavor you're identifying...