Fruit (strawberry) addition

[MaynardX]

Sunday, I am making a Hop Berry beer semi-based off the DFH April Hop and I am wondering how the addition of the strawberries to the beer will effect the outcome. I am abiding by the general fruit rule of adding 10#s of strawberries (from my garden) to my 10g batch after primary fermentation has finished. My questions are this:

How much additional gravity should I expect for the fruit addition? I know there is no exact way of knowing, but a general for average sweet strawberries that have been frozen, thawed, then mushed before adding to the beer.

Also, how much should I worry about the fruit drying out the beer? I am compensating this by adding a pound of carafoam to the malt bill, but I am wondering if that will be enough. I am planning on mashing at 152 deg and I am using a Saison yeast strain.

 

[FirstStateBrewer]

I would not worry about anything. It may dry out, but will be typical of other fruit beers. If you want to change that, you could try adding some maltodextrin to the batch to sweeten it a bit. Also, a few ounces of strawberry extract would do wonders. But, that's up to you.

 

[avidhomebrewer]

I don't know how much strawberry flavor you are after, but I use 10# of fruit for 5 gallons and it yields a good fruit flavor for me - not too overpowering, but in the background. Just thinking that 10# for 10gal may not be enough...

Any time I've added fruit to a brew, it never dried it out. Saison will be a great strain for a fruit beer, imo.

 

[agentEhrman]

I recently juiced 5# of fresh, ripe, organic strawberries for 5 gallons and it turned out great. The taste is definately present, but subtle and not over powering. I actually wished that I would have done something to retain some sweetness, as the flavor in the background is a little tart. Still great though.

I might try adding frozen, thawed, mashed whole strawberries to secondary next time if you can confirm good results. Let us know how it turns out!

 

[Calder]

Adding fruit doesn't really affect the gravity. They might even lower the effective gravity. Fruit contains approximately 10% sugar, or adding a pound of fruit will add the same amount of gravity points as adding 1.5 ounces of table sugar (or 2 ozs of corn sugar) to a gallon.

But ...... since fruit has a fixed volume that will be left behind, they will end up absorbing alcohol; possibly more than could be created from the sugars they contribute.

I always assume fruit adds nothing to the effective gravity.

Drying out the beer: 10 lbs of fruit ~= 1 lb of table sugar in 10 gallons, of 0.5 lbs sugar in 5 gallons. It may drop the FG by about .001, probably no more than that. I wouldn't worry about it, but if you really want to offset it, it would probably be less than 0.5 lbs of Carafoam.

 

[MaynardX]

Here is the recipe I ended up using. I had a little distraction (party) while I was brewing, so I ended screwing up the process a bit (boil overs, over sparging into the boil tank causing a longer boil, etc.), but nothing that should affect the outcome of the beer, other then the abv.

Batch: 11g
Boil time: 90 min
Efficiency: 73% (67% actual for this brew)

22lbs. Pale Malt
1.5lbs Caramunich (56.0 SRM)
1lb Cara-Pils
1lb Crystal 120L
0.5lb Honey Malt
1oz Cascade (8.80%) FW
1oz Citra (13.7%) FW
1oz Cascade 20min
1oz Citra 20min
0.5oz Cascade Flame out
0.5oz Citra Flame out
0.75oz Orange Zest
0.5oz Coriander
2tbsp Irish Moss
Belgian Saison II WLP 566
10# Frozen(thawed) Strawberries

I haven't decided if I wanted to dry hop with cascade and citra yet. I will give it a taste after the strawberry addition to see if it is needed. As for gravity readings, I will take one both before and after the strawberry addition to see what has changed. As soon as I take any readings, I will report back!

 

[Polboy]

Here is the recipe I ended up using. I had a little distraction (party) while I was brewing, so I ended screwing up the process a bit (boil overs, over sparging into the boil tank causing a longer boil, etc.), but nothing that should affect the outcome of the beer, other then the abv.

Batch: 11g
Boil time: 90 min
Efficiency: 73% (67% actual for this brew)

22lbs. Pale Malt
1.5lbs Caramunich (56.0 SRM)
1lb Cara-Pils
1lb Crystal 120L
0.5lb Honey Malt
1oz Cascade (8.80%) FW
1oz Citra (13.7%) FW
1oz Cascade 20min
1oz Citra 20min
0.5oz Cascade Flame out
0.5oz Citra Flame out
0.75oz Orange Zest
0.5oz Coriander
2tbsp Irish Moss
Belgian Saison II WLP 566
10# Frozen(thawed) Strawberries

I haven't decided if I wanted to dry hop with cascade and citra yet. I will give it a taste after the strawberry addition to see if it is needed. As for gravity readings, I will take one both before and after the strawberry addition to see what has changed. As soon as I take any readings, I will report back!

So how did it came out?, i have a split batch of belgian blond and to the half i added some raspberries, i like the flavor from the fruit but it made beer more bitter/tart than the no fruit version, i was searching for possible ways to compensate for that and found this thread and would like to know whats your experiences with fruit beer