Fruit Beer Succulent Strawberry Blonde

Making some of this strawberry blond this weekend! Looking forward to it. One question, did you leave the strawberry frozen when pouring the wort on top??

Just made this batch. Am looking forward to putting the fruit into it. I've never done a secondary fermentation before nonetheless with fruit.

ShKotty said:

Making some of this strawberry blond this weekend! Looking forward to it. One question, did you leave the strawberry frozen when pouring the wort on top??

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This response might be too late for you, but I just froze my fruit and took them out of the freezer right into a sanitized fermenter then siphoned wort on top of it. Before racking to bottling bucket, I used a strainer to get most of the fruit out which had floated to the top.

Brewing this up today. I'm actually making it a imperial strawberry blond

Bluelinebrewer, how long did you let this brew sit in bottles??

Ok here's the situation. I brewed this beer about a week ago with some edits to the recipe. I used 6.6 pounds of Muntons Extra Light LME and 2 pounds of Muntons DME, and Ale I Wyeast pack (what I had available) -- I came up with an OG reading of 1.098 = way high. Is this a matter of my differences in ingredients?

Now, after 7 days in primary the gravity reading is 1.034 with my refractometer. I have read that refractometers are not accurate when alcohol is present and to just use the handy-dandy hydrometer for a good reading (although I recently shattered mine). I checked it two days in a row and still 1.034 -- Do I have a stuck fermentation on my hands?

I went ahead and racked it into secondary onto 8 pounds of frozen strawberry and threw in some active dry yeast, thinking this might get it going again, and set my room up to around 75 degrees. The airlock is bubbling but still pretty slowly. Sorry for the long post, but any pointers here???

@shkotty

How did this turn out?

This brew has turned out very well so far. I just bottled it yesterday after 2 weeks in tertiary. Fairly cleared out, but will do more in the bottles I believe. It smells unelievably good so I am pumped to try it! My final gravity reading (with hydrometer) was 1.014, so I am happy with that -- I just don't trust my initial reading of 1.098 -- that would be a meaty beer/wine combo. Will let everyone know how it tastes!

Wow, haven't logged into HBT for a looooooong time.... Life kinda got busy and just haven't had the time to brew. Recently got a beer kit for Christmas, and thought I'd try to get back into it. I had no idea there were so many posts on this thread!! It appears that the beer seems to be good! I'll try to read back through all of them and see if there's any questions, that haven't been answered yet.

I made a 10 gal all grain batch of a basic blonde ale and split into two fermenters. Tomorrow I'm racking to secondary after two week primary and putting half of onto 3lbs of frozen strawberry.

I'm also getting a little crazy and dry hopping with .5 oz of sorachi ace for a hint of lemon character too. The other 5 gal I'm dry hopping with sorachi ace and a little cascade. I'll be kegging the strawberry and bottling the other. Hope it all turns out!

Cheers

This looks interesting. I am going to put this on my to do list.

anyone convert this to all grain?

yeah, my recipe is at my store though. When I get to work I will post it. It's a slightly different version but comes out real nice.

Hey, guys. I'm gonna brew this thing tonight. I prefer dme to lme, so I made a cpl changes.
6lbs extra light dme
1.5lbs wheat dme
maltodextrin instead of cerapils(LHBS doesn't carry cera)
Sefale us05 instead of 1272 (again, LHBS doesn't carry)

Seem OK? higher est OG, but I should be OK? this is only my 4th batch ever...

edit:
What are your thoughts on adding a small amount of strwberries, 1-2lbs, in the primary or even in the boil?

Primevci said:

anyone convert this to all grain?

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Yeah, WildGingerBrewing did and it is posted here in the thread.

WildGingerBrewing said:

Absolutely. And for the record it was outstanding when I racked it off of the strawberries this weekend. It is going to to be so good. I actually got better numbers than these but this is how I designed the recipe. Here you go, enjoy!

Batch Size: 6.500 gal into fermenter
Boil Size: 8.300 gal
Boil Time: 1.000 hr
Efficiency: 77%
SG: 1.040
OG: 1.046
FG: 1.011
ABV: 4.5%
Bitterness: 25.1 IBUs (Tinseth)
Color: 3.2 SRM (Morey)

1 lb - Cara-Pils
7 lbs - Pilsner
1.25 lb - German Wheat Malt
1 lb - Flaked Corn


Cascade - 1 0z @ 60 min
Saaz - .5 oz @ 20 min
Saaz - .5 oz @ 15 min

Safale S-05

Mash 5 gal @ 156F for 90 min
Double sparge of 2.5 gal each

Two weeks in primary @ 65F-70F. After primary, rack onto 8 lbs of whole frozen strawberries for 1 week. After 1 week, rack to terrtiary for one week and bottle.

The strawberries will soak up a about 1 gal of beer, so make sure you collect extra into the fermenter.

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I currently have this in primary at the moment.

Glad to see more people using this recipe. It is really good.

I was thinking of "juicing" my strawberries in my Jack LaLane juicer and adding the juice to my beer. What are your thoughts on this?

I used this recipe with 5 lbs of frozen strawberry and it was super tart.

ArrowheadAles said:

I used this recipe with 5 lbs of frozen strawberry and it was super tart.

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Used 8 lbs myself and ran into the same problem. I even added a little Splenda at bottling time. Still have some left as it is pretty.difficult to drink. Makes you pucker!

Have seen some other posters using a solution with a half pound of lactose at the same time as the strawberries to mellow the tartness without turning it too sweet. I just did this yesterday with my 8 lbs of berries. Will know how it turns out in a few weeks.

Zalf said:

Have seen some other posters using a solution with a half pound of lactose at the same time as the strawberries to mellow the tartness without turning it too sweet. I just did this yesterday with my 8 lbs of berries. Will know how it turns out in a few weeks.

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I will 2nd this post. I do a recipe very similar to this (just a slightly different blonde recipe) and always add a half pound of lactose into the secondary when I add the strawberries (I use 6 lbs of Strawberries) I don't find the final product to be tart at all, so I would suggest trying that.

When you guys talk about adding lactose to the secondary do you just dump it in or do you add water to it and boil it into liquid. I haven't used lactose for brewing yet. I just brewed this tonight and put it into the primary. I want to have everything ready for next weekend to rack onto berries and possibly lactose to take care of tartness.

tgunn137 said:

When you guys talk about adding lactose to the secondary do you just dump it in or do you add water to it and boil it into liquid. I haven't used lactose for brewing yet. I just brewed this tonight and put it into the primary. I want to have everything ready for next weekend to rack onto berries and possibly lactose to take care of tartness.

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For mine I treated it just like priming sugar. Boil a couple of cups of water, let it cool into the 180-190 range and stir in the lactose. I had to warm the water a bit to get everything completely dissolved. By the time everything was ready the mix had spent a good amount of time at 180+. Then I added it with the frozen berries and racked over it.

Just bottled Friday so I can't comment on how it worked yet.

ok, that's what I thought would be the proper procedure for adding the lactose. Thanks

I really like this recipe. My wife has been wanting to try a fruit type beer.

I have a question about using a tertiary. I have never done that and I'm a little confused on the steps. So I would go from the primary to the secondary and let it ferment with the strawberries for a few weeks. Then after that siphon from there into another bucket which would be the tertiary right? Could I use my primary bucket for that? Just confused on what the tertiary is I guess. And then from the tertiary to the bottling bucket right? Sorry if this sounds confusing. I'm a little confused myself.

jemmons said:

I really like this recipe. My wife has been wanting to try a fruit type beer.

I have a question about using a tertiary. I have never done that and I'm a little confused on the steps. So I would go from the primary to the secondary and let it ferment with the strawberries for a few weeks. Then after that siphon from there into another bucket which would be the tertiary right? Could I use my primary bucket for that? Just confused on what the tertiary is I guess. And then from the tertiary to the bottling bucket right? Sorry if this sounds confusing. I'm a little confused myself.

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Tertiary is just a 3rd step. Rack from primary onto the strawberries in a second vessel. Rack from second vessell off of strawberries into a third vessell. Rack from third vessell into bottling bucket or keg. Use any vessel you want as long as it is clean and sanitized. Oh and empty of course! Nothing to it. Good luck!

Thanks for the info! I'm still learning so the help is much appreciated. Hopefully I have time to brew this weekend.

Zalf said:

Have seen some other posters using a solution with a half pound of lactose at the same time as the strawberries to mellow the tartness without turning it too sweet. I just did this yesterday with my 8 lbs of berries. Will know how it turns out in a few weeks.

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Just an update for those following:


8 lbs of frozen strawberries under a blonde recipe with 1/2 lb of lactose at the same time as the berries. 3 weeks in the bottle and it is still very tart. I love it but it would still be too tart for anyone not expecting a "real" berry flavor. I will probably go with a full pound of lactose the next time I do a strawberry blonde just to see how much difference that makes.

Getting ready to rack a modified batch of this beer off of the strawberries this weekend. Wondering if it would be best to leave the strawberries in the bucket and rack the beer or if I should pull the strawberries out (I have them in a large nylon bag) and let the beer drain off. I don't want to have the possibility of adding too much oxygen to the beer at this point so is it safe to say option 1 would be the way to go?

Dole frozen whole strawberries or sliced?

I use whole.

Thanks

Doing a second batch this weekend
3lbs. Light LME
2lbs. Light DME
1/2lb Wheat DME
1/2lb Pilsner Malt
.25oz Ahtanum 45 min
.25oz ahatnum 20 min
.25oz ahatanum 10 min
.25oz ahatanum 5 min

will primary one week, add 6lbs. strawberries one week, drain berries and secondary for one week and finally bottle condition for 2 weeks. The last time I didi this I didn't let sit after draining berries and have over carbed bottles. Letting sit for another week after removing berries should help with that issue this time. Will post updates as they come along.

Very new to all of this, so excuse me if I'm asking a dumb question. Most people seem to recommend doing the strawberries in the secondary, is there a reason you wouldn't want to just do it in the primary?

Reason for the question is currently my brewing set up is a bucket as the primary and glass carboy for the secondary. Obviously getting strawberries in and out of a carboy is a nightmare. And I worry about switching up the order (going carboy to bucket) as wouldn't there be too much action to do a full batch in the carboy?

Do I just need to buy another bucket? Do a half batch so there's room to work and use the carboy as primary? Or would it work to do the strawberries in the bucket as a primary?

Thanks for any help.

How big is your carboy? I add the strawberrys to my bucket and use it as a secondary. I only use carboys for primary.

5 gallon carboy

@IkeKrizzule

I had the same set up and bought another bucket so the beer was off of the yeast cake. Then I transferred to my carboy for a week (which ended up being 9 days due to other stuff). Just bottled last night. My corona light loving wife drank an entire flat uncarbed juice glass. It must taste ok.

I'm making this right now. I managed about 6 lbs of frozen berries. Just racked tonight. Tertiary next sat or Sunday. Then cold crash for 2 weeks or so.

Should I use gelatin or lactose? Which is better or it it even needed?

I'm kegging if it makes a difference.

For those that complain of tartness -- you need to age this a bit more. Like a wine that uses a lot of fruit, age will bring out the natural strawberry flavor.

esarkipato said:

For those that complain of tartness -- you need to age this a bit more. Like a wine that uses a lot of fruit, age will bring out the natural strawberry flavor.

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Well, I aged mine for a good 6 months and it still had the tartness. I think next time I will try to stabilize and then backsweeten with strawberry juice like Abita Strawberry Harvest.