strawberry berliner anyone?

Just quartered them and then froze them. I don't puree any of my fruit. The freezing will help break it down

 

Interesting. I never really got berry flavor out of rhubarb. Just plenty of tartness. When I bake with it, I think it just compliments the other ingredients. If I had to put a fruit to it, I'd probably say sour apple, but that's probably because I use apples and rhubarb somewhat interchangeably in pies, cakes, and crisps.

 

I'd like to hear what you guys think about contamination issues with simply quartering the strawberries and freezing them, allowing them to thaw and then add to the secondary...I'm wanting to do this but I'm conflicted on what to do here since I'd like to not get a sour beer.

 

How do you keep this from getting a wild bacteria?

 

For me, the green-type rhubarb tastes like sour apple with a touch of strawberries, whereas the pink-type tastes like strawberries with a touch of sour apple.

 

I'm also interested in the contamination issue. I'm going to be making a Strawberry beer shortly and have been wondering about how to sterilize the strawberries. I have seen that some people boil the strawberries, make a jam out of it, let it cool and then add it to the beer.

 

Although this method would work, you'd lose a lot of the strawberry flavor/aroma because you're boiling it. That's why I chose to not add it at flame out.

 

So you don't need to worry about infection? Or do you Pasteurize first?

 

The best I could do is add the strawberries after the beer was done fermenting so the alcohol would inhibit yeast/bacteria growth. If I were trying to play it safe I'd just put it on tap and not really have to worry about it being infected (because it would be gone quickly). I did end up bottling that beer, though. I haven't had a bottle in a while so I can't comment on its current state. One of my favorite beers.

 

Would you be willing to share the recipe?

 

I've done many kinds of fruit by freezing, thawing and adding to secondary. Never any infection issues. YMMV.

 

*This wasn't a berliner, just simply a pale ale with strawberry and rhubarb
Not about getting too fancy with this one, just trying to highlight the flavor of the strawberry. Simple and delicious. The strawberry was destemmed and added after primary fermentation had finished with the rhubarb. I allowed the beer to sit with the strawberries for an additional 4 days.

34 gal batch

OG: 1.056
FG: 1.014

ABV: 5.7%
IBU: 22

Yeast: S-05 Cali Ale

Grain
86% Pilsner Malt: 60 lbs
14% Malted White Wheat Malt: 10 lbs

Mash @ 156F for 60 min

Boil 60 min
2.25 oz Warrior @ 60 min: 20 IBU

Primary addition
100 lb fresh strawberry
4 lb rhubarb

 

Thanks for sharing!

 

Is there a method to getting the fruit flavor without the sugars just becoming more alcohol? I made (attempted) a blueberry witbeer a few months back and the end flavor was much closer to wine than refreshing blueberry.

 

Getting some more details about your process would help troubleshoot. For example, adding just juice is usually not going to add much of the fruit character. Sitting on fruit flesh and skins adds much more.

 

I added about 1lb/gallon of pureed & pasteurized blueberries after the beer had been in the fermented for a week. They remained in there until bottling day a week later.

 

Most fruit won't up the alcohol content too much, as the extra sugars are offset by the extra water contained in the fruit. In fact, if you have a higher ABV brew, you are likely to decrease the alcohol content of the finished product because of this.

What likely happened with your blueberry wit is that the fermented blueberries tasted unlike what you were expecting, as they no longer had their sugar content. The sweetness of fruit (in general) is a major component of the flavour, once you remove this, it can taste quite different. In addition to that, fermentation often changes some of the flavours unpredictably, hence why wine has a vastly wider range of flavour and aroma discriptors than grapes. Often the only way to get the "bright" fruit flavour into a finished product is to use extracts.

 

That's sort of what I expected, which is fine by me. Extracts are much easier to use than real fruit.