Fruit Beer Succulent Strawberry Blonde

[smithnick0]

Bottled today. FG was 1.010. Got ready to bottle and forgot priming sugar. I whipped some up and poured on top and gave it a good swirl. With this be ok?

 

[gregger]

Bottled today. FG was 1.010. Got ready to bottle and forgot priming sugar. I whipped some up and poured on top and gave it a good swirl. With this be ok?

Did you pee in it? No? It'll be fine. A few bottles may have less carbonation, happened to me, but I think i was just being overly critical and expecting the worse to happen.

 

[snpr13]

I brewed up a batch a few weeks ago. Sunday will be 3 weeks in bottle. Sampled a bottle last week great strawberry aroma but a little bit of a bitter strawberry taste. ie unripe strawberry. Berries I used where nice and sweet hope it will show through in profile later.

 

[Tizzomes]

Quick question, I'm going to rack to the secondary this Sunday.I plan on using 6lbs of frozen cut strawberries any thoughts of using a different fruit??? Apricot, raspberries its my first fruit brew and would hate to mess up the base batch.I wouldn't mind bottling what's there now before the fruit ......!!

 

[D_Nyholm]

I just racked to tertiary tonight and took the beer off of 6 lbs of frozen strawberries after they were there for a week. The strawberry smell is amazing but the taste is a little tart at the moment. I also noted that the beer tasted a little watered down so i took a gravity reading. It was 1.005!!!!! When i racked it onto the strawberries, it was 1.011 (AHS Texas Blonde Extract kit). I'm thinking that the frozen strawberries had a lot of water in them and watered down the beer? Is there anything that we can do to fix this and get rid of the watered down flavor? I'm totally new to this so the only thing i can think of is Malto Dexterin (don't know how to spell this)? Would that work? Any guidance would be appreciated!!!

 

[Tizzomes]

I wouldn't worry about the excess water that the strawberries gave off.I mean that's the flavor we're looking for right?Besides think about how much water is needed to make beer alone.Some strawberry juices aren't going to ruin it, that's peanuts in the grand scheme of things.Carb it up the flavors should out.

 

[Tizzomes]

Level out....

 

[NWAleDad]

Okay, tonight is the night! going to crack the finished product this evening when i get home...will post pictures and comments.

 

[NWAleDad]

Okay, after 4 weeks in the bottle (was out of town last week on biz) and almost 3 months obsessing over this brew I'm finally enjoying a glass.

Aroma: WOW - the strawberry smell is amazing, so crisp and refreshing. but it does not over power at all. You can still very much smell the beer.

Head: very limited head retention, but this has been common of late, since the i started using the priming sugar from LHBS. Thinking of starting to measuring my own and stop using the pre measured from the store.

Taste: Very good, but tart and a subtle finish. it might be that I obsessed over this brew so much, that i expected taste bud sex. But instead ended up jerking off to porn from the seventies. I have read a few things on this thread about tart brews and it could be that it is based on the type of strawberries used. I want to try to this again, using fresh organic berries that taste the way i like and freeze on my own. i think this is the best way to get the kind of taste profile i'm looking for. Not completely disappointed, but defiantly need to to do this again before i can call it perfect!

Really interested in hearing about other folks brew turned out in comparison to mine. I used 7 punds of berries and it is a little weaker than i would like. Overall this is freaking wonderful brew and can't wait for the next batch.

 

[ironchefcali]

Trying this, but changed the recipe slightly.
6# pale LME
1.4# wheat LME
And northwest (1332?) yeast

Bought 8# strawberries, cut stems, pasteurized, and sitting in my freezer now. I plan to rack on to strawberries tomorrow. When pasteurizing am I supposed to dump the water I boiled it in n freeze that and add it to the secondary as well? I put about 0.5 L of the the "juices" in the bag to freeze.

Not worried. Had a home brew. Jus curious what others do.

Pretty excited, as this maybe the 1st homebrew my SWMBO will be willing to try.

 

[D_Nyholm]

Cold crashing mine now to try to clear it out a little. Don't think this beer will ever be clear, but mine currently looks the same as the picture above.

Anyone think of putting in a little splenda to combat the tartness? Or is there something else we could do to add a slight sweetness?

 

[BlueZooBrewing]

Cold crashing mine now to try to clear it out a little. Don't think this beer will ever be clear, but mine currently looks the same as the picture above.

Anyone think of putting in a little splenda to combat the tartness? Or is there something else we could do to add a slight sweetness?

Gelatin worked great to clear mine up. Will post pictures tonight. Also, wine conditioner works to backsweeten if you are kegging. It will stop yeast reproduction so if you are bottling youd be better to use splenda or nutrasweet.

 

[hshiggins]

Has anyone sweetened this beer using lactose with good results? Trying to decide the best path for some sweetness. Something about using splenda sits wrong with me.

 

[D_Nyholm]

Has anyone sweetened this beer using lactose with good results? Trying to decide the best path for some sweetness. Something about using splenda sits wrong with me.

I am very new to this, but I did use Splenda since i didn't know what would be better. I ended up using 3 tablespoons in the 5 gallons. It didn't add any sweetness, it was just enough to cut the tartness of the strawberries. I just kegged it this weekend and won't be trying it for 3 weeks, but I hope it wasn't too much as I don't want any actual sweetness.

 

[lextasy23]

Has anyone sweetened this beer using lactose with good results? Trying to decide the best path for some sweetness. Something about using splenda sits wrong with me.

Funny, I just mentioned this in another thread. I think it would give it a nice strawberries and cream taste.

(excited reading other recipes... I'm making my first strawberry now).

/threadjack

 

[makomachine]

Anybody brewed this and the strawberry alarm clock? Trying to decide which to take on first for the women of the clan. Their criteria will be the one with the best strawberry character.

 

[nootay]

Ive got this on keg now. Used the all grain recipe with 6lbs of strawberry. I added them to the fermenter after 7 days. left them for 2 weeks, then racked to keg. incredibly cloudy, but that doesnt bother me. This is a big hit with non beer drinking women. it really tastes like a liquid strawberry with a little bit of twang at the end. Im thinking the frozen strawberries i used were fully ripened. i havent made the other beer, but based on the response ive got so far i think this would work well

 

[makomachine]

Ive got this on keg now. Used the all grain recipe with 6lbs of strawberry. I added them to the fermenter after 7 days. left them for 2 weeks, then racked to keg. incredibly cloudy, but that doesnt bother me. This is a big hit with non beer drinking women. it really tastes like a liquid strawberry with a little bit of twang at the end. Im thinking the frozen strawberries i used were fully ripened. i havent made the other beer, but based on the response ive got so far i think this would work well

Liquid strawberry sums up what they were looking for perfectly. I see a lot of posts on the other beer that seem to indicate it's more subtle and a bit tart which isn't what they are looking for in this. What brand frozen srawberries did you use? Thanks for the feedback!

 

[nootay]

i used kirkland brand strawberries. it was also the reason i used 6 lbs, because it came in a 6lb bag. This does have a bit of tartness, almost slightly sour, although i think it came from the strawberries and is not an infection. The tartness is very slight and comes after you swallow the beer.

 

[makomachine]

i used kirkland brand strawberries. it was also the reason i used 6 lbs, because it came in a 6lb bag. This does have a bit of tartness, almost slightly sour, although i think it came from the strawberries and is not an infection. The tartness is very slight and comes after you swallow the beer.

I'm ok with a slight tart finish. I'm more worried about a VERY tart finish like I had on my strawberry mead that was undrinkable. No residual sweetness at all and incurable even with back sweetening.

 

[nootay]

I definitely think as a young beer, this would have more of a tart finish. Every day it seems to mellow out a bit more.

 

[D_Nyholm]

i used kirkland brand strawberries. it was also the reason i used 6 lbs, because it came in a 6lb bag. This does have a bit of tartness, almost slightly sour, although i think it came from the strawberries and is not an infection. The tartness is very slight and comes after you swallow the beer.

I too used the Kirkland strawberries and mine came out very very tart. I left it in primary for 1 week, strawberries 1 week, then tertiary 1 week. It was tart enough that we added 3 tablespoons of Splenda to it to kill the tartness. It was enough to remove all the tartness and not add any actual sweetness. We split the batch and one has more splenda than the other, so we will see how it works out for when we brew this again next year.

Still haven't drank any yet since it has only been in the keg for a little over a week. Going to wait 2 more weeks until i tap it and pull a pint to try.

 

[matalec1984]

Jumping into this thread fairly late, so a couple questions...

Did anyone end up trying the lactose?

Have people been soaking the frozen strawberries in vodka or just going straight into the secondary?

And finally I'm going to be starting this beer up in the next few days anybody have any suggestions how to make the tart finish as mild as possible?

Thanks

 

[pwndabear]

i just had another one of these last night. the tart finish is definitely going away as time goes by.

 

[matalec1984]

How long has yours bottle conditioned???

 

[pwndabear]

since 05/12; almost 8 weeks. its taking its sweet ass time.

*edit* no pun intended there.

 

[29thfloor]

I did a similar brew about a month or so ago - basically a Northern Brewer Hefeweizen kit w/ 1 week in primary, racked on 7lbs frozen strawberries for a week and then another week in tertiary.

It's been in bottles for almost 3 weeks. Started out really really tart. Just tried one last night that finally seems to be mellowing a bit but it sounds like I've still got some waiting ahead of me.

 

[hshiggins]

Jumping into this thread fairly late, so a couple questions...

Did anyone end up trying the lactose?

Have people been soaking the frozen strawberries in vodka or just going straight into the secondary?

And finally I'm going to be starting this beer up in the next few days anybody have any suggestions how to make the tart finish as mild as possible?

Thanks

I used 8 ounces of lactose in mine. Boiled it and added it to the secondary on top of the strawberries. I pulled a sample last night as I'm about to keg and noticed only a hint of sweetness and almost no tartness. Tastes just like a strawberry to my friends and I. I'm assuming the lactose balanced out the tartness which was my plan all along. Note that I did use super ripe fresh Oregon strawberries (one of the perks of living here) so I'm not sure if my low tartness levels are more due to the lactose or the lack of tartness in the local strawberries.

After the fact I thought adding the lactose might be better timed in the keg as opposed to my secondary though as I'm sure I lose some of it in the berries. Anyone have any advice on that?

 

[hshiggins]

Also, I dumped 8 pounds of frozen strawberries into a grain bag and then siphoned my beer on top of it, just to answer your other question concerning how to integrate the berries. No sterilization at all. When I checked my fermenter last night (exactly 1 week with berries added) the berries were still perfect looking, not even white or possessing any off smells like others have mentioned.

 

[hshiggins]

One more thought/question for those who are more in the know than I.

I was planning to keg this today. Right now I'm at 2 weeks primary, 1 week and 1 day on berries. I saw a few people mention they let the berries sit for a full two weeks. Anyone have any thoughts on what this might do to the beer?

Right now the smell is perfect, the taste is definitely there but isn't anything close to say a lambic of course. I am making this so the chicks can have something to drink I'm curious if I keep the berries on for another week if it'd be beneficial on any level or if I stand the chance of adding more tartness.