Strawberry Wheat went nuts

[Brew Hicky]

Hey guys,

Did a Honey wheat beer this week and let it ferment till the airtlock was down to about a minute between ticks. But when I put the beer over on the strawberry's it took off again like a clock ticking. Its only been a few hours and now I have a high krausen again. is this going to blow off all my strawberry flavor. I used about 6 lbs to get a good infusion.

Ron
:confused: :eek: :confused:

[Brew Hicky]

Well I blew up the airlock Had to hillbilly engineer a blow off tube from my bottle filler

R:eek:n

[DubbelDach]

I did a Mad Elf clone over Christmas... Was a tripel with a bit of chocolate malt and a few pounds of clover honey. It fermented like a volcano.

When I xferred to 2ndary, I racked it on 5 lbs of Bing cherries that I froze over the summer... It took off again, hard... The beer was 12% abv when I put it on the cherries, so I hazard to think of what it ended at, I always told people 14% "or so"...

[Mill Rat]

Relax, brewhicky, that's completely normal behavior. You used about the right amount of berries, too. You'll have plenty of strawberry flavor.

[BrewGuy]

I have a few bottles left of a cherry stout that has great cherry flavor. I used 5lbs of tart cherries in the secondary, and I got the second krausen as well. Sounds like its going to be a good beer.

[Brew Hicky]

Well it crawled back in the carboy after a night on the hose. The straberry bits went from red to merky yellow as the color drained into the beer. I hope its half as good as it smells.

:p Ron:p

[BikeNBrew]

So no problems with contamination adding fruit to the secondary? The only times I have used fruit are with a cherry stout. There, I add the fruit at the end of the boil, flame out, and let them pasteurize in the hot wort for 15 minutes or so before cooling.

What steps do you take to insure you don't contaminate your wort / beer?

[BrewGuy]

When I put cherries in the secondary this is what I do. Lightly mash them to break the skins, without crushing the centers out, then bring them up to 165 deg for about 5-10 minutes. Then I throw the pot into an ice bath to cool it, then scoop them into the secondary. I use the cut offf top to a 2 liter soda bottle as a funnel. Then rack the beer on top. Haven't had any problems so far with this method.

[markaberrant]

It's hard to contaminate a beer once it contains alcohol and has lots of active yeast in suspension (this would be the point where primary fermentation is just starting to subside).

I just wash and clean my fruit with cold water, freeze overnight, thaw in the morning, mash it up or puree with sterilized equipment, and then add to primary.

[bigben]

here is my strawberry blonde I did last summer. it had some insane amount I believe it was 10 lbs or so in it. gotta look at my notes. but it came out tasting just like strawberry shortcake. two members here tried it seemed like they liked it. here is the secondary fermentation.




where the heck is the img tags on this board? arg

[Brew Hicky]

Yep looked about like that I had 6 pounds of berries. I bottled it this moring and it has some insane alcohol content. The Honey wheat was suppose to be around 5.4 and after the berries it went all the way to 1.000 I'm guessing its somewhere around 7.5 to 8 abv.Its gonna have one hell of a kick.

[got_homebrew]

981

currently doing a strawberry Kolsch style beer that looks like that, do have one question though. It's been in secondary for about 3 weeks with very little bubble activity but theres still a thick layer of either krausen or seeds on top, Think its safe to bottle today? If it is seeds is there a good way to keep the seeds out?

[Dangerous Beans]

My guess is that that is left over krausen, and that the seeds have gotten water logged and sunk to the bottom. If the airlock isn't bobbling and there is a good seal around the bung it should be safe to bottle.
I would just bottle the strawberry seeds, but if you want to get them out they are probably at the top or the bottom. So if you bottle carefully you should eb fairly safe on the seeds.

[BrewGuy]

The few times I have added adjuncts like fruit to the fermentation process I always trust my hydrometer. When I have 3 24hr period readings that are the same you know its done. After three weeks it is probably finished to the point that you won't get bottle bombs, but you could end up over carbonated if it is not quite ready to bottle.

[piratedrunk]

So I've been preparing for my first fruit beer (strawberry vanilla pale) and have been trying to figure out how much strawberry to use. For the sake of reference, should I assume all the measurements I find are for 5 gallon batches unless otherwise specified?

The plan is to use 5 pounds of strawberries and one full vanilla bean in a 5 gallon batch.

[Brew Hicky]

I used a flat of strwberries in mine I'm not quite sure how mant pounds that is. It was either 8 or 10 pints I forgot to write it down but it had good strawberry flavor. Everyone who tried it liked it.