strawberry skeeter pee

I have 5 gallons finishing right now and i want to split some off to make strawberry lemonade.

What is the best technique to infuse some strawberry flavor without losing the lemon?

How many pounds per gallon?

The lemon is usually pretty dominant, so I wouldn't worry too much about losing the lemon. Some people flavor using frozen juice concentrate, others have gone simpler and used powdered drink mix like Kool-aid. If you have fresh berries, you could freeze them, tie them up in a mesh bag and soak them in the batch, but you'll be risking a pectin haze. Pectic enzyme doesn't work well while the yeast are active.

Captive said:

The lemon is usually pretty dominant, so I wouldn't worry too much about losing the lemon. Some people flavor using frozen juice concentrate, others have gone simpler and used powdered drink mix like Kool-aid. If you have fresh berries, you could freeze them, tie them up in a mesh bag and soak them in the batch, but you'll be risking a pectin haze. Pectic enzyme doesn't work well while the yeast are active.

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I like the mesh bag idea. What ratio of strawberries per gallon should i use and how long should i soak?

Lon,
Thanks for the recipe
I followed the recipe ingredients to the letter (Except the yeast)but i varied the starting technique. I dissolved the sugar and Safale SO-4 slurry from a batch of sweet cider (FG 1.020) in one gallon of water. I really whipped the hell out of it with my degasser until it all dissolved then i added the rest of the first round ingredients and put it in my 95 degree attic. less than 24 hours later the airlock was chugging away like mad. it was burping 10-12 bubbles every half second. After 3 days the gravity was 1.020 so i moved to a cooler 85 degree room and added the second round stuff and fermentation didn't slow a bit. i sampled before adding the second round stuff and it was great. Clean light finish with no off flavors. I was really worried that the hot ferment would cause something funky, but it truly didn't.
Thanks again, this is one of my new favorites.

Cheers Dusty

Glad it's working for you Dusty. We always welcome pictures and comment submissions on the website as well as our Skeeter Pee facebook page. Skeeter Pee on Facebook If you "like" us on facebook, you'll get occasional updates when people share their ideas.

so on the concentrate, how much would you add to a 4 gallon batch for flavoring?

It depends on what you would like. I've seen anywhere from 1-4 cans of frozen used. Remember that the concentrate contains sugar, so you may or may not need additional sugar for sweetening. Another thing to consider is the acid content of the concentrate. If your batch already has a lot of "pucker power", adding more concentrate that is high in acid could have an effect on the finished product. Cranberry, raspberry, tart cherry & pineapple come to mind when I think of high acid concentrates. You can sometimes overcome the acid with more sugar but too much sugar could push you into a sweet wine which some people can't enjoy.

I would start slow, add some and taste. Keep adding until you're happy. A good rule of thumb is to stop adding just before you think it's right. If you're sweetening with table sugar, the acid in the SP will tend to break the sucrose down over the next few days into fructose/glucose which is more easily perceived by the tongue.

if i added pectin enzyme before pitching yeast is it still effective if i rack my batch over to a secondary with fresh strawberries in it?

Yes it will help. You may have some haze since fermentation is done already but the haze will me nothing like if you don't use pectic enzyme.

If the fermentation is over and I've coldcrashed, can you rack on fresh strawberries? I can add pectic enzyme. Do I need to do something to sterilize the strawberries?

I do not see why you can't rack onto some strawberries. I have a skeeter mead I am debating on racking onto some strawberries. Once you get over 9%-10% ABV then infection is not too much of a risk but you are at risk of fermentation picking back up. So it is still good to stabilize like the skeeter recipe outlines.