Strawberry beer

[gibbiem]

I'm planning to clone Sam Adams Boston Lager tomorrow and wondered how it would taste if I turned it into a strawberry beer? Thinking about crash cooling after primary is finished then rack to secondary on top of some strawberry jelly and jam and leave to condition in the cold for a while. Thought the sugar in the jam would carb it up in the keg. The recipe I'm following is:

4.5kg MO
250g crystal 60

Saaz for bittering, 50g
HALLERTAUER HERSBRUCKER at 15, 5 and dry hop.

yeast will be my 1056 ive been reusing

Cheers

[wilfh]

You'll need to add some pectin enzyme. I did a wine with blackcurrant jam years ago and without the enzyme it's clumpy flaring bits. Wilf

[Petrovitch]

Generally speaking people tend to rack onto whole/dried/frozen fruit as you get the best flavour and it tends to sediment out. Jams and jellies aren't that great for flavour IMHO (although this is mainly based on experience from winemaking); once the substantial amount of sugar is gone you don't actually end up with a lot of fruit flavour. Strawberries also tend to be a bit lacking in flavour, when the Belgians do strawberry beers I seem to recall they chuck in a lot more than with other fruits, or use very concentrated syrups. You need buckets of fruit to make a strawberry wine taste of anything... And cloudiness may be a real problem from the pectin etc as wilfh said, especially as you are making a lager. And any citric or other acid may affect the balance of your beer. Ooh and there are preservatives and stabilisers in there too

But give it a go! Depends how much strawberry flavour you want I suppose? Maybe try with half the batch...

[6470zzy]

I'm planning to clone Sam Adams Boston Lager tomorrow and wondered how it would taste if I turned it into a strawberry beer? Thinking about crash cooling after primary is finished then rack to secondary on top of some strawberry jelly and jam and leave to condition in the cold for a while. Thought the sugar in the jam would carb it up in the keg. The recipe I'm following is:

4.5kg MO
250g crystal 60

Saaz for bittering, 50g
HALLERTAUER HERSBRUCKER at 15, 5 and dry hop.

yeast will be my 1056 ive been reusing

Cheers

I am sure that your beer will turn out just fine but if you really want to clone Sam Adams Boston Lager (with or without strawberries) you might want to use a lager yeast. You will want to add the pectolase though unless you don't mind the pectin haze. Let us know how the strawberry taste comes through after its ready. I am curious about this one.

Cheers

[Barley Water]

You won't even taste the strawberries unfortunately. The yeast will burn the sugars taking away the sweetness and you'll be left with very little flavor I fear. Additionally, if you dry hop that hop flavor is going to cover up whatever you manage to bring over into the beer. The reason many like to add fruit to wheat beers is because they have next to no hops and additionally if you end up with a little pectin haze who cares, it's a wheat beer. Another way to go is to allow the hops to add the fruity flavors. Some hop varieties have some flavor nuances associated with them you might be interest in; Citra and Mosaic are two that jump right out at me but I know there are others. Later in the year I'm gonna try a wheat IPA and plan to use both those hops late to try and get a citric, fruity finish to the beer......I guess we'll see how that works out.

[6470zzy]

You could always try to get a hold of some Belma hops, they have strawberry notes.

[gibbiem]

Cheers fellas, think I might give it a miss this time and try a wheat beer. I know a couple of fellas on here are both brewing a strawberry beer so gonna keep an eye on that thread too