Real fruit or fruit puree

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Hey guys, I'm doing my first strawberry wheat beer right now and I have a question about using real fruit or using a puree for the stawberry flavor. I've been reading about using real fruit (on the order of 1#/gal) but my secondary is a glass carboy with a small neck. The real fruit might be a bit problematic for this reason especially if I use a strainer bag like I've been told is good. I also don't know the best way to sanitize the fruit before using it.

What recommendations do you have, real fruit or use a puree? If real fruit, what's the best way to sanitize. If puree, how much should I use?

I appreciate the help.
 
I use the frozen kind and just go straight from bag to bucket in secondary. The fruit sinks, but I can see where cleaning a carboy would be problematic. I'm sure puree would be fine too, albeit more expensive. But the thing is, I wouldn't use strawberries (or peaches), as they have the reputation of not really bringing much flavor when fermented. Cherries, raspberries and especially blackberries all work well, probably at a rate around 1/2# per gallon.
 
I really want to do the strawberry beer and I have a few people that I'm working with who want to see how it turns out so I'm going to have to go for it right now. Also with raspberries and blackberries, I've heard that they can give the beer a sweet bitterness or tart flavor, have you have any problems with anything like that? I think having a good recipe will help that but that's what I've heard from other brewers.

My plan of attack going forward is this: I'm splitting the beer (2-2.5 gal sets), one using the frozen strawberries (tried to find a strawberry extract but neither brew store nearby had any) and one with a raspberry extract. I'd like to go all berries at some point but the raspberry extract seemed safer right now until I figure out a better recipe to avoid what I mentioned above.

Thanks for the info, as always thoughts and comments are very much welcome!
 
Raspberries are on the tart side, which is fine if you build your recipe accordingly. Any fruit you use will add some acidity, and have all its sugar ferment out. Some are also higher in tannins, which will add some drying bitterness. I've never used strawberries, but I'd go at least 1lb/gal, and count on losing at least 1/2 gallon of beer to the trub. You might want to split your batches unevenly to make up for this, like 3 gallons on strawberries and 2 on raspberry extract. What part of town do you live in?
 
Yeah I thought about doing a slightly uneven divide and see how it goes, this is all experimenting right now so if one doesn't quite work out its not too big of a loss. I think my next set of fruit beers will all have tailored recipes for each flavor, for this one I took a good wheat recipe I have done before and made a few very minor alterations and went with it.

I'm out near the Energy Corridor on the west side of town. I checked with Texas Homebrewers in Katy a week or so ago and they didn't have any strawberry and neither did DeFalco's yesterday.
 
I bottled both beers yesterday after 16 days in secondary. I had 2 gallons of raspberry wit (extract) and 3 gallons of the strawberry wit (real fruit). I think the raspberry will come out ok, I just need a few attempts to get the extract flavoring amount just right, I started conservative on this one and a quick sample during bottling showed it didn't have too much flavor, we'll see how it turns out. The strawberry one though has me a bit concerned, the strawberries turn white during fermentation and the beer had an interesting odor to it, not one that seemed all that good. Has anyone else had this experience, did it turn out ok? I have a pictures I can send you or post later once I get them off my phone.

Thanks
 
The color change is normal, I think that's the yeast living on there. I've tried to eat the fruit before, thinking that it would taste like the beer, only more so! Not the case. Nasty stuff. Hope the beers turn out well.
 
Well its been a while so thought I might supply an update...

Both the strawberry and raspberry turned out very well! The strawberry came out with a very nice aroma and just a hint of strawberry flavor on the back end of the beer. It definitely wasn't overpowering which is something I was concerned about and not too sweet either. The raspberry was also pretty good, not quite as much flavor as I would have expected but still very good overall.

Thanks for the help on this, really helped out.
 

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