More on Strawberry Hefe

[Moonpile]

So one of my brewing buddies wants to do a strawberry hefe. I know it's been discussed in another thread here, but I didn't want to hijack it with this direction.

What I'm seeing is that it looks like people are putting whole strawberries, or maybe cut up ones, in the fermentor or secondary.

That seems like it will both be a hassle to get the beer out later and kind of a waste of strawberries to me.

We have access to a juicer and we're considering juicing a bunch of strawberries and adding it to secondary or just to the bottling bucket.

Has anyone tried that? Suggestions, tips, warnings?

 

[NYeric]

I may be way off base here due to my lack of experience in making beer, however I do have some experience in drinking.....

It seems to me that a Hefe has a unique flavor all its own, that a hefe should be left a hefe. If you want to make strawberry beer just go with a basic Strawberry Wheat......IMO

 

[Moonpile]

Ok, forget about what style of beer we're might add the strawberries to. What I guess I'm really asking is:

1) will juicing the berries first impart the flavor we're looking for?

2) will it restart fermentation? Ie. should we add it when we rack to secondary (which we ordinarily wouldn't do with a hefe)?

3) Would adding it at bottling time cause problems?

4) How many strawberries do you think we need for a 5 gal batch?

5) etc.

 

[Sir Humpsalot]

1. Probably, it's your best bet. I was also considering using some strawberry tea bags and using that as the mash and sparge water.

2. Yes it will. I suppose it'd be fine added to secondary. Seems that's what most people do.

3. Yes. That will most assuredly cause problems. Can you say bottle bombs? HOWEVER, if you know the volume of juice, you can measure it's specific gravity, compare it to the specific gravity of sugar for a given volume of water, and figure out how much to add, or how much to hold back, in order to prime appropriately. Isn't there also strawberry honey?

4. A minimum of 1 pound per gallon. Probably 2 pounds per gallon. Strawberries don't have the strongest flavor.


I've thought about doing it, but the commercial version I tried and the things I've read have largely dissuaded me. I would try a multi pronged approach. Using strawberry tea, real strawberries and lots of them... and probably even some strawberry extract/flavoring

From all I've read, creating a truly awesome strawberry beer would be an accomplishment in itself, regardless of the methods it takes to get you there.

 

[NYeric]

Ok, forget about what style of beer we're might add the strawberries to. What I guess I'm really asking is:

Sorry mis understood your question....

....Is there really a benefit to the extra work involved as opposed to purchasing puree. When I researched for a raspberry wheat, I kept getting directed back to the puree. What about the cost fresh fruit isn't cheap, and it seems there is a larger margin for error.

However if the flavor is far superior, it would be worth it

 

[ruppe]

Let me first tell you I'm an extract, partial mash brewer. It never ceases to to amaze me how many full mash brewers, who avoid shortcuts, will look for shortcuts to add fruit or other flavors to add to their brews. Fruit is expensive. I've made a few raspberry beers, but only because I spent an hour and a half picking 4 pounds of raspberries in my dad's patch.

But I can tell you from experiance, you can expect a tart flavor, since the sugar in the fruit ferments, unless you filter out the yeast and add sugar later. The only way I've found to add fruit easily is in a very malty beer, like a porter or stout.

 

[Ó Flannagáin]

I may be way off base here due to my lack of experience in making beer, however I do have some experience in drinking.....

It seems to me that a Hefe has a unique flavor all its own, that a hefe should be left a hefe. If you want to make strawberry beer just go with a basic Strawberry Wheat......IMO

(Sorry to hijack) Dude, I love a straight up hefe as much as (usually more than) the next guy. But, its an interesting idea.... strawberry/banana?!?!

 

[Moonpile]

Well I guess the first thing is to try to juice some strawberries and see what the gravity of the juice will be. One way or the other, that will be good to know and juicing them will let us know how much of a PIA it will be.

If we go this route, we'll report back!

 

[chthonik]

We had our first taste of the strawberry hefeweizen as we bottled it last night.

Wow!

Beautiful pinkish yellow color and strong strawberry aroma, no mold or signs of infection. Strong taste of fresh strawberries with hints of hefeweizen flavor in the background, not artificial tasting or faint. The beer is carbing as we speak and it should be ready to drink in the next few days. We'll have another update soon!

We wound up brewing a straight forward extract hefeweizen with the Wyeast 3068 yeast, which seems to have more subdued banana and clove flavors than the WLP300. After a week in primary, we racked the beer onto 4 quarts of rinsed, cleaned, sanitized strawberries cut into quarters. 4 quarts of berries wound up being 4.75 lbs, on a 5.5 gallon batch of beer, pretty close to what others here have done (just short of 1lb per gallon). The beer sat on the berries for 5 days, then we added wheat DME to carb and bottled it.

I think the key here was using fresh, extremely ripe local strawberries; not the big flavorless berries you typically see in the supermarket, these were deep red, juicy, and intensely flavored when you tried them straight. It was actually hard to avoid eating them as we cleaned them!

I think this is going to be an annual, once a year beer for us!

 

[Moonpile]

Yeah, various people were telling us not to make this beer, but I'm glad Cthonik talked me into it!

I was quite relieved not to find a big mass of mold in the bucket when we opened it. I'm sure sanitizing the berries was the key step there. The beer tasted great and we even ate some of the strawberries, which gave tingling sensation and were not very nasty looking.

Cutting up the strawberries made it very easy to get the beer out of secondary and into the bottling bucket. No worries at all and we lost almost no beer.

If I would tweak this recipe in any way it would be to use even more strawberries, and maybe, just maybe, puree some up after they've been in secondary and use a piping bag to put a dollop in each bottle as we bottle.