Strawberry beer

I plan on making a strawberry beer. Any suggestions on what type of beer I should brew it in. And any other suggestions or tips you could give would be great since this is my first fruit beer.

I brewed a blond ale this summer and racked on to a bunch of fresh strawberries. It was good. It was an extract recipe. Dont be afraid to type in a recipe search and see what comes up too!

Succulent Strawberry Blonde
Recipe Type: Extract
Yeast: Safale US-05
Yeast Starter: No
Batch Size (Gallons): 5
Original Gravity: 1.072
Final Gravity: 1.010
IBU: 7
Boiling Time (Minutes): 30
Color: 4.7
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 14 @ 64
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 7 @ 68 on the berries
Tasting Notes: Crisp and clean. Nice strawberry flavor.

Ingredents:
6# Pilsner Pale LME
3# Wheat LME
8 oz Carapils
8 oz Crystal 20
.5 oz Cascade 7.5% @60 min
.5 oz Citra 12.9% @ 10 min
½ lb Lactose @10 min
Safale US-05
8 lbs, yep, 8 lbs, of fresh strawberry's, frozen to kill the nasties

Steep grains for 30 minutes at 150

Is there a need to sterilize the strawberries first or do u just toss em in there?

I've made only 1 fruit beer but it happens to be a Stawberry wheat beer and it is amazing. Not sure if you are doing all grain, being the beginners forum I assume possibly not. Mine was done all grain but I see no reason why it wouldn't come out just as good using a wheat and regular extract combination.

I did a simple wheat beer 60% wheat to 40% 2 Row. With just a bit of Cascade ~.5 oz (I like cascade and I had a bunch around since its mostly for bittering I bet any bittering hop would likely do just fine) at 60mins. I added a 1oz shot of Cascade at 5minutes just to bring in a bit of the cascade flavor.

I let it ferment for a few weeks then racked the whole thing onto 6lbs of frozen strawberries (bag of organic berries from Costco). I didn't even thaw them just racked onto them. I left it on the berries for a couple weeks and then racked it into a keg.

I ended up with a very nice pink color and a wonderful tart strawberry flavor. The wheat beer added a nice smooth mouth feel. I will say it was very fruity so be aware of that if you are looking for something subtle use less fruit especially with a less malty and flavorful beer like a wheat.

Have fun whatever you end up making

Just freeze them for a few days. It will kill all the nasties.

When I go from my secondary to bottling won't I have to worry about seeds and fruit bits?

timrox1212 said:

When I go from my secondary to bottling won't I have to worry about seeds and fruit bits?

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When I transferred from my secondary (where I had the strawberries) to a keg (in your case bottling bucket) I sanitized a mesh sieve and was able to scoop out ~95% of the now pale squishy berries which were mostly floating. From there I just tried to rack carefully and avoid the others leaving a bit in the bottom of my secondary that I just figured as loss. You do lose a fair amount making a fruit beer since the berries also absorb some.

I think any loose seeds and remaining bits just ended up settling out in my keg and would do the same in the bottle, ending up in the yeast you leave behind when poring a HB.

Freezing breaks the cell walls so the beer can extract much more flavor but it won't kill any wild yeast or bacteria. They just go dormant in the freezer and will wake back up when you thaw.

To kill the bugs you either have to heat to 160F or soak in StarSan.

You also might want to consider late additions of Belma hops from HopsDirect.com. They reportedly have very strawberry notes.

I recently did a clone of Shorts Bloody Beer which uses fresh tomatoes. I heated water to boiling and dipped the tomatoes in the water for one minute then pureed in a sanitized blender and racked on top of the puree in primary. The beer has another week of lagering left but all samples so far have a great light fresh tomato flavor, not cooked flavor which is what I was going for and I would imagine is what you would want as well.

I am just starting and was wondering if there was a list of terminology someone could share with me.

slohsandt said:

I am just starting and was wondering if there was a list of terminology someone could share with me.

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Here's a decent list of common terms http://beeradvocate.com/beer/101/terms.php that might help. With or without the list however, just reading through HBT and watching a few(hundred) videos on youtube, and you'll be talking beer with the best of em.

Welcome to the fray!

Another vote for Belma hops. They should compliment the stawberries nicely.

OK OK Freezing may not kill anything but it seems to work fine for brewing. Reference the post by Inkman

inkman15 said:

+1 on the above responses regarding sterilization. I just did a blackberry beer myself (currently in the secondary) and I used store-bought fruit that I froze and put directly in the secondary. There seems to be a bunch of different opinions on how to use fruit (freeze it, puree it, do nothing to it, etc...) but based on the threads I've read here, people seem to have good results just freezing it and adding to secondary. Check out these threads:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/adding-strawberries-2ndary-106243/
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/adding-blackberries-secondary-134322/
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/sanitizing-fruit-other-alternatives-253994/

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davekippen said:

OK OK Freezing may not kill anything but it seems to work fine for brewing. Reference the post by Inkman

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It usually works because there aren't very many bugs that can compete with the millions of brewers yeast that we toss in there. And many of the bugs that can will take a LONG time to make any taste difference.

Chances are really good that washing and freezing the fruit will yield good results but there are always ways to improve those chances even more.

How would one make a strawberry beer similar to fruli (more strawberry taste, less tart berry taste).

Wash the berries and soak in starsan. If you are really paranoid soak in 160+ water for a min like someone else said. Easy. Put them in a hops bag when you rack and you'll get no seeds or gunk in your beer. Or if you wanna get fancy, purée them and let the strawberries become one with your beer.