Fruit Beer Succulent Strawberry Blonde

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
So I'm sorry if this was answered elsewhere, but I couldn't find it. Will 8 lbs of frozen strawberries fit in a 6 gallon secondary carboy? I know most people are using buckets but I only have carboys available at the moment and I'm trying to keep costs down. Any input would be great! Thanks!

Maybe. I only do 5lbs or so usually with a 1/2 lb lactose, but if you have more than 5 gallons of beer I think you'll have a hard time fitting it all in. I messed up and did closer to 6 gallons and had issues fitting it in with fruit going from bucket to 6 gallon carboy w/fruit (obviously). Bottled a 16 oz to try my base carbonated and had a big uncarbed sample as well.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Home Brew mobile app
 
I believe it will. Since primary is over, you won't have the krazen (sp) to deal with. I used 8 lbs and it went right up to the neck. If there's anything left over, just have a good sample. :mug
 
I followed this to the letter. Wow! It is by far the favorite now at my house. I use a blow off tube with the strawberry addition. I guess the yeast loves the strawberries. I know I do. :fro:
 
I learned to do the primary in my 6 gallon better bottle. Then, I put the strawberries in my bucket and transferred to the bucket. Using the bucket as the secondary allowed for easier cleaning as far as getting strawberries out and in.
 
I followed this to the letter. Wow! It is by far the favorite now at my house. I use a blow off tube with the strawberry addition. I guess the yeast loves the strawberries. I know I do. :fro:

Hey Mike when you say you followed this to the letter are you referring to the original recipe posted on page 1?
 
Ok I am planning this for my next brew! Thinking I will primary for 2 weeks then secondary onto the strawberries for one week and then tertiary for cold crashing. Any thoughts on this? Would love to get a few opinions.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew
 
Wild do you use the full 8 lbs of strawberries?


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew
 
Wild do you use the full 8 lbs of strawberries?


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew


Yup! Everytime. When i switched to AG, i revised this recipe and posted it under Wild Strawberry Blonde. Pretty much everything is the same. Been brewing this one succesfully for years. The only recommendation i can really give you on strawberries, is don't buy cheap ones. They have color added and will make your beer look like pink lemonade, or grapefruit juice. They also have a much different flavor than say, Dole. I've heard of people using fresh berries, but i never have.
 
Was wondering if anyone has steeped any honey malt in their recipie? Im thinking it might add a little sweetness to the beer, possibly enhance a sweet strawberry taste. Thoughts or suggestions?
 
I did this beer with a little difference as to the amts were what i had on hand without a trip to my LHBS and it is good even right out of the secondary. here is my recipe.

8oz carapils steeped at 155 for 30m
3lbs Pilsen light DME 60m
.5oz cascade 60m
3lbs pilsen dme 30m
1lbs wheat dme 30m
.5oz saaz 20m
1/4tsp super irish moss 15m
.5oz saaz 5m

WLP060 American Ale yeast w/ starter

8lbs fresh quartered strawberries in secondary.

carb with 5oz corn sugar for 4-5wks.

This turned out to be about 5.7%abv with an almost perfect complimentary hop notes at 13.8 IBU's.

This has a definite spot in my rotation now.
 
Instead of racking on top of the berries can't you blend the fruit and put it into a grain bag. The clean up would be easier. Add the bag to the bucket an rack when ready for bottling.


~RDWHAHB~
 
Brewed this up a couple weeks ago. Just moved it into the Tertiary. Tasted the sample and Man this stuff was good. Original gravity reading wasn't good as i didn't have a thief. I have a thief now and took a gravity reading when moving to the tertiary and came up at 1.012. Can't wait to try this sometime in mid august.
 
Brewed this up a couple weeks ago. Just moved it into the Tertiary. Tasted the sample and Man this stuff was good. Original gravity reading wasn't good as i didn't have a thief. I have a thief now and took a gravity reading when moving to the tertiary and came up at 1.012. Can't wait to try this sometime in mid august.

So after sitting for a while i just cracked open the first one and it's not bad, but this may sound weird but the first taste i get when it enters my mouth is Bondo, but it's brief and i can't figure out why. Infection maybe?
 
Interesting. Can't say as I've ever experienced that. What brand of strawberries did you use?

Got them from Trader Joes. Talking to a buddy of mine he's thinking it may have been the temps it was sitting at. They were sitting at around 70ish degrees in the primary but it definitely got hot in my basement one weekend when i was away when it was sitting in my secondary (75ish) and while it was in the Tertiary.

Will probably brew this again but not until i build a fermentation chamber. This will hopefully allow me to better control the temps.

Edit: Excerpt from our conversation
Not sure how accurate my first OG was but here's the following:
OG: 1.030
FG: 1.012
Sat in Primary for 2 weeks
Racked over to strawberry and I tried not to bring any trub with it, Sat in Secondary for 9 days
Racked into Tertiary and let it sit for 2 more weeks.
All temps were about 70 Degrees
Did not cold crash before transferring to bottles.

Edit. Pt2: Just talking to my wife about it now and she mentioned too that it didn't have that taste when we tasted it while bottling. So not sure if it's maybe just that bottle or if there's really something going on.
 
Hard to tell. This is one that does some good aging for a couple of weeks. Give it a couple weeks and try it again. IIRC, someone said it tastes best around the 6 week mark. I haven't brewed this one in a long time, been trying to nail down my AG version.
 
Hard to tell. This is one that does some good aging for a couple of weeks. Give it a couple weeks and try it again. IIRC, someone said it tastes best around the 6 week mark. I haven't brewed this one in a long time, been trying to nail down my AG version.


Soooooooo, when you gonna make the AG version? Bwahahahah

1.050-1.054 is. Pretty spot on OG IIRC.
 
Soooooooo, when you gonna make the AG version? Bwahahahah

1.050-1.054 is. Pretty spot on OG IIRC.

Funny you mention that Ginger! So, I brewed my AG version back in December, bottled it in January. Tasted it 3 weeks later and it had a weird taste, almost plastic like. I kinda wrote off the whole batch, and stuck it down in the basement. Last night I grabbed one, stuck it in the fridge and let it chill. Tried it out this evening... BOOM!! Tastes great!! I even looked back at our old PMs from a while back to get your address, so I could send you some...
 
Funny you mention that Ginger! So, I brewed my AG version back in December, bottled it in January. Tasted it 3 weeks later and it had a weird taste, almost plastic like. I kinda wrote off the whole batch, and stuck it down in the basement. Last night I grabbed one, stuck it in the fridge and let it chill. Tried it out this evening... BOOM!! Tastes great!! I even looked back at our old PMs from a while back to get your address, so I could send you some...


Awesome. Would love to have one! Lemme know if you dont find the address.
 
The fiancee racked it to the secondary last night! She told me that it already tasted great without the strawberries, so I'm excited to see how it tastes with the strawberries!View attachment 270877


When I first brewed this recipe about 2 years ago I did half strawberry and I left half without and they both were great. Once the strawberry reaches the "sweet" spot it tastes so good!
 
I'm two weeks into this recipe, and I have a heavy (pun intended) question about gravity.

I was originally light on extract by about the equivalent of .8 lbs less LME than the original recipe, so I was expecting my OG to be a little lower. My OG was 1.050 and I used the WYeast smack pack.

After 9 days in the primary at about 66*, my airlock was still showing activity and my gravity was 1.022, so I know fermentation was not complete. I went ahead and decided to rack it on the berries anyway to rush this batch for a planned vacation next month.

I racked onto 8lbs of strawberries and added 1/2 pound of lactose. After 5 days on the berries, I took a SG reading with my hydrometer last night at 1.010. This is great, I'm going to take another reading before racking to the tertiary to be sure this is my FG.

My question is, since I added the lactose to my frozen berries, how many gravity points to I need to deduct from my FG to get a meaningful number? I've read that I should deduct 1.042 pppg for lactose, or in my case (1/2 lb in 5 gallons) would deduct .0042 gravity points from my final reading, but that would give me a FG of 1.0058, which seems very low relative to other posters here.

I also seem to have an issue with seeds or other particulates (attached photo) that seemed to be suspended in my sample last night, but I'm not too worried since it will spend a week in the tertiary. I may try to filter it somehow in the bottling bucket.

SB_Day14.JPG
 
I usually go from 1.076 down to 1.017-1.012 on my variation of this recipe. I'd just recheck the gravity after the week in tertiary and if it's still the same, bottle it up.
 
Are the strawberries supposed to be floating in top in a foam? Will they settle into the beer later?
 
Back
Top