I'm doing a StrawBerry Blonde soon and would like to use strawberry puree. I searched the forms and puree seams to be the way to go, but I 'm haven't been able to locate strawberry puree. Wouold anyone know of a source? If not, what about using strawberry base used the wine vinters?
I had good luck with 5# of frozen strawberries right out of the bag. Thawed them, mushed them up right in the bag, and dumped them in the secondary. In fact, 5# in 5 gal was too much, would cut it back to 4# next time.
I have used frozen raspberries out of the bag, I would guess Strawberries would work well too, and should be much cheaper. Be prepared for a mini fermetation when you add the strawberries.
Thanks everyone for the info. I ended up using 5 Lbs. frozen strawberries we already had in the freezer. In Wisconsin, 15 oz. of Oregon brand strawberries (10 ozs. product weight) go for 3.59 a can. I weighted until a day after the yeast started to flocculate and dumped it all into the secondary. The berries were just thawed out, pureed, deseeded and 2 tblsp pectin enzyme were added. Fermentation was slow and steady. I kegged it last night and it tasted and smelt pretty good. The OG was 1.052 and it finished at 1.016. I forgot to take gravity when racking to the secondary. I'll do another post in a month or so and comment on how it turned out. On a side not, I have done quit a few amber/cranberry ales and they usually need at least 3 or 4 months before they taste their best.
The StrawberryBlonde has been in the keg for 10 days at 40 F. The strawberry aroma and flavor is just right for my tastes. It should be a nice fruit beer after a few months aging. The alcohol is a byte high (7 ish) since I forgot to compensate for the amount of fermentable sugar in the strawberries. In the past I didn't need to do that when using cranberries.
On a side note; allowing the yeast to flocculate some, resulted in the yeast fermenting the strawberries slowly which maintained a very nice strawberry aroma and a little higher final gravity. That insures a more "natural" tasting strawberry flavor since strawberry flavor usually includes some amount of sugar.
The StrawBerry Blonde has been in the keg for two weeks now and tastes pretty good for the 1st go at it. The next batch needs to be a little more sweater and malty. The plan is to add 1 lb of Munich, subtract 1 lb of pale malt, increase the Honey malt to 1 lb.
