Brewing my own strawberry beer.

scottfromirelan

HI Guys,

I've taken the plunge & gotten the equipment & ingredients to brew my own strawberry beer. Though ive been looking over the net & found that to make beer there seems to be tons of ways & ingredients.

So basically im hoping that you guys can say whether im on the right track in regards my amounts & methods in this rough idea:D

So i have 2 -1 gallon demijohns im using to ferment.

I was going to
- boil up my 1.5 kg can of Malt extract in 6 l of water
- Add in 20g of hopes in a nylon bag
- add 3l of the wort to each of my demijohns
- Add yeast starter
- leave to ferment.
- after 2 days add canned strawberry's ( reduces chance of infection)
- when its ready to bottle, i will mix water with a half teaspoon of sugar per bottle, & add to beer to total mix.
- add to my bottles & cap
- leave for further week or two.

Will this work?

Id really appreciate some help with the amounts & method as thats is where im a bit fuzzy.

Cheers
Adam

BeerNut

Hi Adam,

It looks like you're leaving out the hops. This means your beer will lack any sort of bitter balance and will shorten its shelf-life. If practical, I'd recommend putting in 20g or so of hops when you're boiling the extract (assuming the extract isn't pre-hopped, of course). Since Irish moss is a kettle fining you'll have to boil it at this point too, but you're going to wind up with a cloudy beer anyway so honestly I'd just skip the Irish moss altogether. If you're not using hops or finings, you don't have to do any boiling as the LME is already boiled before they can it.

Remember that once your wort is boiled and cooled, everything that touches it must be sanitised. The best way to handle fruit in beer is to freeze them, then sanitise them and then add them to the fermentor.

I've no idea what the pectin enzyme is for*, but you're deffo gonna need some yeast
*Edit: oh, is it to get fermentable sugar out the strawberries? I wouldn't bother -- fruit in beer is better treated as a flavouring and nothing else.

A teaspoon of sugar per small bottle is way too much. Half is loads.

scottfromirelan wrote: »

Will this work?

Yes (if you use yeast), but unfortunately the beer is unlikely to be any good. Canned malt extract is not a good ingredient whatever way you slice it. If you're going back to the drawing board (and the homebrew shop) let us know and I can suggest a few things you might want to buy to do this better.

oblivious

I would not boil any fruit as it will destroy a lot of the flavour/ aroma or can give a cooked taste which is not something you want either. An strawberry's are the hardest to get a good flavour in beer, raspberrys are brilliant though

Just brew the beer as normal, when it finished or nearly finished fermenting add the thawed fruit to the beer and give it another week to ferment the sugars revealed. If your worried about bugs/infection you can blanch the fruit before or when its frozen to reduce the bio-load, also this method there should be less pectin haze in the beer

BeerNut wrote: »

I've no idea what the pectin enzyme is for*, but you're deffo gonna need some yeast
*Edit: oh, is it to get fermentable sugar out the strawberries? I wouldn't bother -- fruit in beer is better treated as a flavouring and nothing else..

Reduces haze caused by the carbohydrate pectin, especially released when a fruit is boiled there cell walls break down, think of jam making just the opposite

I don't think its fermentable products, as the pectinase is used by fungi to gane enter to the fruit

scottfromirelan

Hi guys,

Cheers for the help. I do have hops & yeast ( just forgot to add them in) and Ive edited the original with your comments in mind. so could you check my methods right?

- Northern Brewer Hops ( bag of 100g)
- 5g of yeast

I was going to add the Hops in a bag, while boiling the wort & add the yeast in when im putting it into the Demijohns to ferment.

Beernut- ill give this a shout, then ill be in touch for some good advice

Cheers
Adam