Crafting my first Recipe - Strawberry Basil Wheat

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pentirei

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As of right now I've only brewed one batch of beer, and my second is coming up, but as spring and summer are just around the corner, I want to have something refreshing ready to brew once I get my upcoming batch racked into my secondary.

Conversations with friends led me to the idea of making a strawberry basil beer, which I immediately thought would work best in a wheat beer. I want this brew to be simultaneously quaffable and interesting. Soooo, as I am new at this, I wanted to get some feedback on my (very tentative) extract recipe.

Here's what I'm thinking, for a 5 gallon batch.

.5 lb Cara 20L
.5 lb Carapils
6 lb Wheat LME
1 lb Golden Light DME
1 oz Cascade hops (boil 60 minutes)
.5 oz Belma hops (boil 30 minutes)
.5 oz Belma hops (aroma)*
1 oz fresh basil at flameout
2 pkgs rehydrated US-05 yeast**

Primary fermentation 3 weeks
Rack onto 6 lb strawberries***
Secondary fermentation 2 weeks

Rack into bottling bucket, prime with 5 oz corn sugar and bottle.

* Toying with the idea of dry hopping with another ounce of Belma. Whatcha think?

** I chose US-05 because it tends to ferment "clean," and also because it's apparently relatively more forgiving of temperature variations. Keeping my carboy a steady temp in my tiny Manhattan apartment without sophisticated temp control equipment isn't easy. Any thoughts on a more appropriate yeast strain?

*** The threads I've read about adding strawberries are many and varied. Because of the basil I want to make sure that the strawberry tastes/smells really fresh in the final product. Any consensus on the best way to go about doing this? Freeze them? Sanitize them? Puree?

Any other suggestions/tips/general wisdom would be greatly appreciated.
 
This sounds CRAZY delicious, so please keep me updated on how it goes! Unfortunately, i don't have much experience in this area to share with you, but I might suggest that if you are concerned about the strawberry flavoring, you might consider adding a wee bit of lemon or lime. A bit of citrus will help brighten up the strawberry. :-D
 
The 05 should work well and let the berry basil flavor shine. Not sure about the basil, but the consensus I've seen is 1-2 pounds per gallon fresh strawberries in the secondary. I guess it depends how much fruit flavor you want. you could always taste test and add some extract before bottling. to prep the berries, One option is to freeze them which breaks down the cell walls. Or you could just mash em fresh, and putting them in a nylon bag works well for extracting the fruit gunk. Either way, you might consider racking to a third vessel to allow the fruit crap to clear. Personally, i would sterilize the berries, either dunk them in starsan with the baggie before freezing or pasteurize by holding at 170 in a double boiler. Ive heard people just throw m in, but why risk an infection? .Let us know how it turns out!
 
May I ask why you are considering the basil at flameout? I would be worried that I would "cook" the basil in the wort at that temperature (but I've never tried anything like that either). Would putting it in secondary be an option too?
 
Basil is very delicate, and the heat of the boil will drive out the complexities of the flavor.

I would do a basil chiffonade (you might even do well crushing it in a mortar and pestle) and put it in a hop bag with a couple of sanitized marbles. Place that in secondary :)
 
Thanks for the feedback! I was a little concerned about cooked basil, too, but I was worried that with the extra fermentables from the strawberries already present in the secondary, "dry basiling" would be another risk for contamination. Do you think I have anything to worry about there? When exactly should I add it to the secondary?

Thanks again! I'll definitely let you know how this turns out, but it's a plan still in the pipeline so it may be awhile before I can report back on it.
 
I'd make 2.5 gals just in case it isn't so good. You can soak the basil in a little vodka to sanitize and extract the flavor, dump it all in secondary. I made a cilantro-lime Pale Ale that turned out well and "dry cilantro'd" in secondary with the vodka method.

For temp control, just put the fermenter in a tub 'o water. Control temp as needed with ice bottles.

You can primary a half batch in whatever your normal primary fermenter is, then get a 3 gal better bottle to secondary half batches.
 
Quick update:

Brewed this today, with a few tweaks. OG was 1.052, right on target.

Only had a half pound of DME so I ended up throwing in a half pound of honey to compensate as the wort was chilling. I also used Citra instead of Belma as it was easier to get a hold of. The wort is too bitter, thanks to me checking the alpha % on Beersmith and not on the package beforehand (doh!), but I'll survive. Since I'm using more strawberries than initially planned, I've added some lactose to compensate for the inevitable tartness that will accompany them.

I'm using the Succulent Strawberry Blonde method of simply racking onto 7 lbs of frozen organic strawberries from Trader Joe's, and one fresh ounce of fresh basil that I'll soak briefly (around an hour) in vodka before tossing into the beer.

Keeping my fingers crossed. The wort really is significantly more bitter than I anticipated, so I hope that doesn't mess up the finished product.

So the recipe is therefore amended to:

.5 lb Cara 20L
.5 lb Carapils
6 lb Wheat LME
.5 lb Golden Light DME
.5 lb clover honey
1 oz Cascade hops (boil 60 minutes)
.5 oz Citra hops (boil 30 minutes)
.5 oz Citra hops (aroma)
.5 lb lactose
2 pkg US-05 yeast

After primary fermentation is complete, rack into secondary onto:

7 lbs frozen strawberries
1 oz fresh basil soaked in vodka

Let infuse 1 week. Afterwards rack to tertiary, wait for beer to settle/clear, then add 5 oz priming sugar and bottle!

Thanks for your suggestions, everyone -- keep your fingers crossed for me.

:mug:
 
I've only brewed a few batches but I've ALWAYS found that the wort is way more bitter than "I want it to be" but by the time it ferments and conditions that bitterness tones down to where it should be. I wouldn't be worried about it too much until you get fermentation going. Sounds good. Let us know how it goes!
 
Don't even think about boiling basil. You'll destroy the aroma.

I don't know that plain old vodka has enough sanitizing power at 80 proof. You need 66% abv to kill bacteria. It might give you peace of mind, but I don't know that it is even doing anything at all. I personally wouldn't worry about it because it's not like the basil is covered with dirt & bugs, and you're adding it to the secondary, which is no longer easily infectable, sugary wort.

Give it a soak/rinse with ice cold water, then chiffonade (roll into a cigar shape and slice fine on a diagonal into thin strips with a sharp knife). Be careful not to bruise it, smash it, or coarsely chop it. You don't want it to turn black or release any bitter flavors. I would consider upping it to 2.5 to 3 oz.

The frozen strawberries will also release more flavor if pureed before pitching into secondary. If using a secondary, rack your beer on top of the strawberries and basil; not the other way around, which can aerate your beer. In the same line of advice, this is only your 2nd batch so I would try to limit racking to a minimum as to avoid oxygenation. Tertiary is a little overboard. It would be a shame after all of this hard work you had an oxygenated beer that tasted like wet cardboard and cheap sherry.
 
I'm using the Succulent Strawberry Blonde method of simply racking onto 7 lbs of frozen organic strawberries from Trader Joe's, and one fresh ounce of fresh basil that I'll soak briefly (around an hour) in vodka before tossing into the beer.

I made a Strawberry Wheat last spring using fresh locally grown strawberries and it was by far one of the most popular beers I've brewed to date among my friends. I'm a bit of a strawberry snob and I usually will only eat strawberries during harvest time here in Ohio so I also choose to only make this beer only during the strawberry harvest time in Ohio which I am anxiously awaiting!

Last year, at this time, I was a relative newb to homebrewing and this was the first and only time I've made this beer so I was a little leery about how it would turn out when I made it. Especially after reading many posts about how bitter Strawberries can make the beer or how many strawberries you need to get any flavor at all to come thru or whether or not I would need to add artificial extract flavor (which I did not want to do) to help bring out more flavor.

Well, I just went with what I felt comfortable doing in the end. And what I did was I went with a ratio of 1 lb of strawberries/gallon of beer that I brewed. I made a 5 gallon batch so I used 5 lbs. of fresh strawberries. I cut and then froze the strawberries while the wort was fermenting. Then after fermentation was complete (about 7 days) I then chose to heat the frozen berries in a saucepan to 120° just to eliminate the risk of any nasties living on the berries. I also did this because heating the berries breaks them down and releases a lot more flavorful juices. Then, after letting the berries cool, I then dumped them into a sanitized nylon paint strainer bag over my fermenting bucket allowing all of the juice to just pour into my beer. I then tied the bag and dropped it into my bucket and let it ride for another week or so. The end result was a fantastic beer. Not bitter at all and plenty of strawberry flavor came through! Oh and I rarely, if ever rack any of my beers to a secondary vessel and this beer was no exception. I see no need to have to take the time to rack the beer on top of the berries fwiw... :mug:

Also, I'm very interested in hearing how the basil addition turns out in your beer? Sounds intriguing. Keep us posted on how it turns out! I just might have to make a small side batch with a basil addition myself... :mug:
 
Guys, thanks so much for the suggestions. I just racked into the secondary last night.

As wolfstar and EyePeeA suggested, I ended up doing a basil chiffonade that, incidentally, I didn't end up soaking in vodka at all. I just threw it in the nylon bag with my frozen strawberries. At EyePeeA's suggestion, I was going to up the basil to perhaps 2.0 oz, having purchased a 2.5 oz container of fresh basil, but after tossing the spotty leaves and the stems, I think I only ended up with my original goal of 1 ounce, maybe 1.5. Hopefully it's enough. It certainly smelled potent enough.

I weighed the pros and cons of heating/pureeing the strawberries but decided to simply toss the berries in whole in the nylon bag -- I'm not too worried about extracting strawberry flavor, as the berries were incredibly aromatic even right out of the freezer -- and I wanted to avoid as much pulp getting into the beer as possible. Also, because I got every last bag at the store, I only ended up getting 5.5 lbs of berries. I sure am adapting a lot as I go along with this brew.

Thanks to the unseasonably cool spring, I actually had some ideal fermentation temps pretty consistently throughout the last few weeks. My other batches with US-05 seemed to have a problem floccing out but the yeast cake on this batch was so solid I could rest the racking cane on the bottom without sucking up any (visible) slurry. Gravity came out to about 1.010, give or take a point. Tastes pretty good/clean, and the lactose gives it some nice body, but it sure does taste green, naturally. I'm confident that'll take care of itself.

Concerns over the bitterness are still there a bit, but not nearly so much anymore. USMCPayne was right that fermentation took quite a bit of the bitterness out, and I'm sure that further time in the secondary and conditioning will alleviate most if not all of the "extra" bitterness. If anything, I'm glad there are some isomerized alpha acids in there to help fight off any nasties that might've been living on the basil and/or strawberries.

In about a week I'm going to remove the strawberries and basil. Do you guys think I should bottle right away, or should I wait a little while to let the beer settle?

I'll be sure to let you know how it tastes at bottling time. I'm trying not to get my hopes up for this beer, but my friends are all really excited about it.
 
I bottled this today.

Ladies and gentlemen...brew this beer.

I saved a sample and clumsily force carbed it using a SodaStream thingamajig. I knew it would make a mess but after tasting the flat sample I HAD to know what at least a rough draft of the final product would be like. And it's amazing.

There's the sweetness from the lactose playing against the tartness from the berries and the bitterness of the hops. The basil transformed from ... well, basil ... into an herbal, almost incense-like aroma. The strawberry flavor shines through beautifully but is certainly not overpowering.

I say again: BREW THIS BEER!

Obviously it will change as it bottle conditions over the next few weeks, but I'm incredibly excited to see how it develops right now.

If I had one complaint it's that the color was much darker than I thought it would be, but it still picks up a lovely ruddy hue from the berries. I still think it's rather lovely. I wasn't going for clarity in this beer because of its wheatiness, so I don't mind that.

And here's a photo.

strawbasil.jpg
 
Ok. You have me intrigued. When I make my version of strawberry wheat, I'm tempted to brew a side batch (maybe 2-3 gal.) and add the basil to it.

I'm not afraid to try different things either. I brew a Belgian Wit for the summer that has coriander, orange peel and chamomile. My wife suggested a change up by adding lavender, so I made a side batch with some lavender that I soaked in vodka for a week and then added it to the beer in secondary. Turned out pretty damn good!

You have more hop additions than I do for my wheat beer recipe I use to make my strawberry wheat. I only used an oz. of Saaz at 60 for my recipe. Wondering if this will make much of a difference overall?
 
pentirei said:
I bottled this today.

Ladies and gentlemen...brew this beer.

I saved a sample and clumsily force carbed it using a SodaStream thingamajig. I knew it would make a mess but after tasting the flat sample I HAD to know what at least a rough draft of the final product would be like. And it's amazing.

There's the sweetness from the lactose playing against the tartness from the berries and the bitterness of the hops. The basil transformed from ... well, basil ... into an herbal, almost incense-like aroma. The strawberry flavor shines through beautifully but is certainly not overpowering.

I say again: BREW THIS BEER!

Obviously it will change as it bottle conditions over the next few weeks, but I'm incredibly excited to see how it develops right now.

If I had one complaint it's that the color was much darker than I thought it would be, but it still picks up a lovely ruddy hue from the berries. I still think it's rather lovely. I wasn't going for clarity in this beer because of its wheatiness, so I don't mind that.

And here's a photo.

Basil seems to taste like licorice when it's in alcohol. Different than basil flavor, but interesting.
 
You have more hop additions than I do for my wheat beer recipe I use to make my strawberry wheat. I only used an oz. of Saaz at 60 for my recipe. Wondering if this will make much of a difference overall?

In my batch, there is a pretty noticeable hop presence in terms of bitterness. Saaz (which I admittedly have never used personally) appears to have a rather low alpha acid percentage (3-4.5%) compared to the Cascade (6.8%) that I used as my bittering hops. That alone would change the structure of the beer pretty substantially, but I think it's all a matter of taste.

Bitterness aside, I'm pretty sure the citrus/tropical aromas typical of the Citra hops I used at 30 minutes and at flameout helped "bring out" the flavor/aroma of the strawberries, but without a basis for comparison I can't be sure. So I say try it with your preexisting recipe! I'd be afraid of it coming off too "sweet," but then I'm not a fan of most Belgian witbiers for that very reason so I'm not the best judge. Let me know how it turns out!
 
The recipe I use for my strawberry wheat is based off of a basic simple American wheat beer. The Belgian Wit I was talking about is more like Great Lakes Holy Moses and is an entirely different recipe.

While I am all about the hops (can't have too many in a beer if you ask me), my wife isn't into hoppy beers at all. And I mainly brew the strawberry wheat for my wife as it's by far her favorite of the beers I brew so I think I will try adding the basil while sticking with my recipe I have and keep the bitterness from the hops as is with the Saaz to keep her happy. :)
 
Basil seems to taste like licorice when it's in alcohol. Different than basil flavor, but interesting.

Are you using Thai basil? It has a potent anise/licorice flavor. Regular basil, or sweet basil, has none of this quality.
 
TexanRudeboy said:
Are you using Thai basil? It has a potent anise/licorice flavor. Regular basil, or sweet basil, has none of this quality.

Thai and Genovese, maybe you're right.
 
One last update. The beer is now fully carbed and just as delicious as I hoped. You get a fresh basil aroma the second you open the bottle, which gives way to the sweeter berry scent almost immediately. This beer tastes as fresh as a springtime garden! Because I used US-05, the beer is actually clarifying, albeit a bit more slowly thanks to the wheat proteins. Given a couple weeks in the fridge I bet I'd have crystal clear beer here.

I have a problem though. It's a huge hit with my beer-loving and non-beer-loving friends, so I'm going to have to brew another batch before too long. Next time I'll alter my boil technique to get the lighter color I was expecting, but other than that I don't think I'd change a thing with this recipe!

Seriously -- if you have any curiosity as to how basil pairs with strawberry in beer form, try it! I promise you won't be disappointed. God knows I haven't been! Sure am glad I went full out with a five gallon-batch...
 
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