Blonde ale & strawberrys

Just brewed 5 gal of a blonde ale and wanted to strawberry to it. My question is when to add , and what to use fresh , frozen or extract? Any advice will be much appriceated

 

I have made several batches of strawberry blonde. These beers have been for SWMBO so they have been more of a STRAWBERRY blonde. I used 10 lb of frozen strawberries for a five gallon batch. . I have used frozen strawberries both cut up into halves and puréed. The beer with strawberry halves had a great strawberry aroma and a pretty good strawberry flavor. It also came out fairly clear. The puréed strawberry beer had a great aroma and a much more pronounced strawberry flavor but it just would not clear.

I would be a little worried that fresh strawberries could infect your beer. The freezing process helps kill some of the microbes. I have heard the extracts give a medicinal flavor to the finished beer. .

 

like the above post, I added 7# of fresh pureed strawberries to a 5g batch.
Nice aroma, strawberry taste (not enough for SWMBO), but nonetheless a good taste and it had a definite pink color to it.
I also noticed that it did not clear as well as previous batches, which after making some batches of cider, I now realize that it is most likely the pectins that caused the haze. I am not OCD with the clarity of a beer like that, as the taste is what I am after.

I let my strawberry puree sit in 4 cups of vodka for about 10 days, so there is NO chance that they would infect the beer.

You can also freeze it as mentioned above and that should kill all the microbes as well.

 

Freezing fresh strawberries or using frozen ones is recommended (not only because the freezing process kills bacteria) but because the freezing process breaks the cell walls allowing more of the fruit to be imparted to the beer.

 

Thanks for the info on using the frozen berrys but do I add them to primary or secondary ?

 

Add them in primary after the kräusen falls but the beer hasn't really cleared. It's best if you can let them thaw before adding them so they don't drop the temperature too much. I have temperature control and a heater for my fermenter so its not as big a deal for me but you could make the yeast go dormant. They would probably wake back up for the strawberries but I wouldn't risk it.

If you are using a bucket for primary then just gently pour them in and wait for round two of the fermentation to finish. If you are using a carboy for your primary then you need to buy some defoamer like Fermcap otherwise this will happen:





Oh and also this...my carboy was actually under pressure and a strawberry / yeast romance explosion blew out all over my face when I tried to remove the airlock to clean it out.




Seriously, use Fermcap if you're using a carboy.

 

I've used raspberry extract before and it tasted like cough syrup. I assume strawberry would have a likely result.

 

I made an absolutely awesome strawberry blonde. I brewed the blonde and let it ferment in primary for 2 weeks. Then transferred it to secondary where I put 6lbs of frozen strawberries in a 5 gallon paint bag for easy extraction of the strawberries. I let them sit in secondary for 10 days. Then I bottled it. It had a great strawberry aroma, taste, and was clear as can be.