looking for help with a strawberry IPA

Odd? yeah probably a bit. But a friend of mine wants to make an IPA with strawberry on back end. She preferably wants to do this without extract flavoring...told her it would be tough to match strawberry to IPA hops...however, if there were people who know, they would be here.

Thank you in advance. (actually she wants dogfish head aprihop only with strawberry).

I have a reasonable grain bill in mind. The only problem is the hop combo for a fruit IPA boggles me. Also all of the clones (not many) I have found so far carry virtually no consensus when it comes to hops. This beer apparently carries around 30 IBU.

Any thoughts on hop combos that would compliment a strawberry IPA? thanks

Off the top of my head, I think Amarillo would go ok with strawberry.

As far as the strawberry, Randy Mosher has said that strawberry is one of the quickest fading aromas/flavors of fruits added to beers. Maybe extracts or flavorings would stick around longer than fresh fruit - just a thought...

You have to use alot, ALOT of strawberries to get any kind of flavor, and the beer (or at least mine) was a weird, fleshy pink, NOT COOL. I used 1.5 lbs of frozen strawberries to a gallon of Strawberry peach Wheat beer, and the strawberries where just there in flavor. i would think you would really have to use alot to get them to play with the hops in an IPA. That being said, maybe consider some strawberry jam or jelly. You'll have haze and pectin issues, but WTF and it should be a pretty powerful flavor.

As to hops, I'm with Grizzlybrew, Amarillo all the way!!!

+1 for grizzlybrew and potter1 the jam idea sounds smart if it tastes good i think your friend will settle with a little haze and you can always try an alternative later. how bout strawberry syrup like they use in milk. this may resolve potential pectin issues and its concentrated so the flavour could be stronger

demonrichie said:

how bout strawberry syrup like they use in milk. this may resolve potential pectin issues and its concentrated so the flavour could be stronger

Click to expand...

That could work or you could add pectic enzyme to the secondary.