Strawberry Blonde Real Strawberries or Syrup Stuff

Brewing a batch of Strawberry Blonde for the summer. This is a Kit beer and it came with a bottle of "syrupy" looking strawberry flavoring. Is there any way to substitute this with actual strawberries or should we just use this stuff? If so, how many strawberries should we add to the secondary?

Thanks!

Well, there's no good way to answer that. It depends on your opinions. Here's what I'd recommend:

When your beer is done fermenting, extract a little bit of it and put it in a glass. Then add a small amount of the syrupy stuff. Taste it, if you can't taste it, add a little more. Repeat until you have the desired level of flavor. If you like the flavor, use the syrupy stuff. If you don't then try real fruit.

The problem with using real fruit is figuring out how much to use and the fact that it restarts fermentation. So your beer will take longer. I've heard you need quite a lot of strawberries to get a good strawberry flavor. I used three pounds of raspberries on a raspberry wheat, so you'll need at least three pounds. Try four pounds and, if it isn't enough, add another pound. Repeat as necessary.

I'm pretty sure Oregon puts out a strawberry puree. I recommend using that. You don't have to worry about seeds clogging the airlock and it is already sanitized so there's no worry of infection. It also has a much more uniform flavor than a basket of strawberries will have.

You can also combine real fruit and the syrupy stuff. If you found you didn't use enough real fruit, you can compensate by adding a bit of the syrup.

I have made several batches of strawberry blonde, trying various combinations of ingredients and techniques. You can look under my recipes to find what I use nowadays (mostly), which won a gold medal at competition last year.

I don't like the extracts. They have a funny chemical aftertaste that I don't like. I have done purees before, but those have a "richer" flavor that reminds me of tomatoes, and I can't get them to clarify very well. What I do now is buy fresh strawberries at the farmer's market or grocery store, then wash, halve, sanitize, and freeze them.

Do you like the way strawberries taste or the way strawberry flavored things taste? The reason for asking is that strawberry flavoring is most often a lot sweeter than actually strawberries. My blonde made with fresh strawberries really brings out the tart side of the berries. With my next strawberry batch I will probably do everything the same for half the batch and add some extract on top of the berries in the other half to see if that evens out the berry flavor some.

We just cashed a 5 gal batch of strawberry blonde over the holiday in 3 hours. I used straight extract from AHS. It got rave reviews on the lake, but I would be cautious on the amount of extract you use. Like Mojotele stated.. I tried a few samples before I settled in on an amount to use. The AHS site states use 2 oz's for a full 5 gal batch....I found this to be just the right amount....any more and I feel it woulda drifted a bit to the cough medicine / medicinal side. Good luck!

There are two pretty active threads on here about strawberry blondes. I have one in terttiary now that's been there for almost 3 weeks. I moved it to the fridge to cold crash it the other day. After primary fermentation, I racked the beer onto 8 lbs of frozen strawberries. Left it another week then racked to terttiary. I don't know how to post a link, but you should look for the other two threads. They were very helpful to me as this was my first fruit beer.

Garr-Ro said:

We just cashed a 5 gal batch of strawberry blonde over the holiday in 3 hours. I used straight extract from AHS. It got rave reviews on the lake, but I would be cautious on the amount of extract you use. Like Mojotele stated.. I tried a few samples before I settled in on an amount to use. The AHS site states use 2 oz's for a full 5 gal batch....I found this to be just the right amount....any more and I feel it woulda drifted a bit to the cough medicine / medicinal side. Good luck!

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Not to hijack, but I made this recipe (possibly the exact same as yours) from AHS. I used the texas blonde ale and the strawberry flavoring. After being in the bottle for a week ,I know, pretty early, but there is almost no conceivable strawberry taste, and a not-so-nice aftertaste, which could well be from the slightly high ferm temps. We even used double the amount of strawberry extract (4 oz). Any thoughts? How long did yours condition before the holiday weekend?

peanasky said:

Not to hijack, but I made this recipe (possibly the exact same as yours) from AHS. I used the texas blonde ale and the strawberry flavoring. After being in the bottle for a week ,I know, pretty early, but there is almost no conceivable strawberry taste, and a not-so-nice aftertaste, which could well be from the slightly high ferm temps. We even used double the amount of strawberry extract (4 oz). Any thoughts? How long did yours condition before the holiday weekend?

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Peanasky,
You're right, that's the exact base that I went with to play around with. Couple of questions for ya, how long did you let it ferment (primary and/or secondary), how/when did you add the extract, & did you do a couple of "sample tastings" prior to going with the double batch?

I used the White Labs yeast (German Ale / Kolsch 029), kinda rushed on the conditioning but I went 2 weeks primary, 2 weeks secondary, cold crashed (with gelatin) for 4 days, then force carbed (keg) in order for it to make the trip to the lake. My thoughts would be to let it mellow for a while, MOST everything gets better with time. As for the no conceivable strawberry taste...I don't have much input...everybody that had some of mine (single bottle of strawberry extract) picked it up on the nose and commented on it in the taste. The not so nice aftertast should mellow with conditioning time. My ferment temp, which was a bit high (IMO), was in the mid to upper 60's. Best of luck man .

I was pretty impatient overall (first batch ) 2 weeks in the primary, check fg, then to bottles. Added the extract at bottling time along with the priming sugar. Didn't do any 'samples' with the extract before adding both in, but I did save a pint at the end of bottling. There was a decent strawberry smell, a some taste, but not nearly what I expected. I figured that the after taste would mellow out with some time, looks like they're staying in the closet for a while

Thanks for the input. I guess I'm either expecting too much of a strawberry taste, my taste buds suck or I just got a bad bottle of flavoring. Oh well, you win some, you loose some.