Back to Shopping at NorthernBrewer.com

Revisiting the Strawberry Jam idea

Northern Brewer General
#1

Am brewing right now. A light ale, 4pnds LME, 2 pnds Honey at end of boil, Kent Goldings to bitter and some homegrown Cascade for aroma at the end. 05 yeast cake getting pitched.
Anyhow, I’m going to ferment the 5 gallon batch, then when transferring to secondary I’m going to split and rack into separate 3 gallon carboys. One will just get moved for no reason, the other will get racked onto some home made strawberry jam.

Do you guys think 1 pnd of jam is enough for 2.5 gallons? Should I throw caution to the wind for experiments sake and do 2 pnds? I mean it may not turn out too good which is why I’m splitting the batch. If it sucks at least I have half a batch to enjoy. :mrgreen:

#2

Really looking forward to see how this turns out SolomonsCommune. I have a little over two pounds of strawberry jam made up now just waiting for a carboy. I think i may try two pounds of jam per a 5 gallon batch. I tried a wonderful strawberry Kolsch brew by Avondale brewery at a Brewfest over the weekend that was awesome.

#3

I hate to disappoint you guys but the odds of adding strawberry jam to a beer to achieve what you expect are very slim. You see the sugars in the jam and fruit will ferment out leaving a very dry beer and the wonderful fruit flavors and aromas are scrubbed by the fermentation activity.

Best bet is to use extract. Dont use the homebrew shop stuff I like Natures Flavors. All natural and organic. This will get you the results you want. Adding jam will give you hazy tart rocket fuel.

1 Like
#4

zwiller may be right.

How much sugar is in the jam? You need to consider this as fermentables. Along with the natural sugars of the strawberries. Combine that with the honey and you have a lot of non barley sugar.

The pectin in the jam may also contribute to a hazy beer.

#5

The 2 above me are correct. The jam will ferment out and you will have a pectin haze. Pectin is a gelling agent and will haze a beer as sure as starch.

#6

Thanks for the replies. I’m trying to figure out the math in how much I’d add to a carboy. I’m sure you guys are right but I may just have to find out on my own ha…

My mother actually makes the strawberry jam. The recipe calls for 2 quarts of whole ripe strawberries and 7 cups of sugar. This makes 8 - 1 cup jars.

According to my cheap digital scale, a cup of sugar weighs in at just over 7 1/2 oz which means there’s about 2 cups of sugar to a pound. My half ass math tells me there’s roughly 6.56 oz of sugar to each 1 cup jar of strawberry jam. The real problem is we, of course, don’t use 1 cup jars to put the jam in. We use anything we can find - Country Crock butter containers, etc…

When I look at the 30oz butter container it looks as though it would hold at least 3 if not 4 jars of jam… The container full of jam weighs 2.17 pnds. I don’t know that I’d use the whole container. I could just thaw it, and actually add cup fulls to the carboy at a time. 2 cups of jam would roughly be like adding 13 oz of sugar, plus any fermentables the strawberries would have…

I did make a recipe awhile ago that was 60 percent LME and 40 percent honey. It actually turned out quite good (at least I thought so). This recipe would turn out similar if I added 2 cups of jam to 2.5 gallons of wort.

Again, I’m sure you guys are correct. The haziness I could care less about. The taste is what I’m interested in. I’ll let you know how bad it is. :mrgreen:

#7

Just a heads up. I’ve gone and done it heh… I split that honey and Gold LME batch up between two carboys. The 3 gallon carboy is just dry hopped with Kent Goldings. The other carboy contains 2.5 gallons of beer on top of a pound of Strawberry Jam and about 1/2 pound Blackberry jam. The blackberries came from my yard. I don’t know why I decided to add the BB jam… I guess I figured if I’m going to mess up some beer I might as well go all out :cheers:

You guys will probably be correct : Super Tart Rocket Fuel. At the very least I assume I’ll be able to get drunk from it so maybe it’s not going to be all bad. I’ll let you guys know how it turns out.

#8

I don’t know if anyone actually reads this thread. This is my third post, to myself, in a row ha…
Anyway, just wanted to mention that I have only used buckets for primary fermentation in the 10 or 11 batches I’ve made. I have a 3 gallon carboy and two 5 gallon carboys and have secondary’d a lot of my beers and seen a little action sometimes from racking but it’s funny to see some actual fermentation for the first time.

I racked half of that 5 gallons on that Jam and it’s neat and scary at the same time watching it pick back up to fermentation. I see shit flying/floating around in there, chunks flying up to the top and sinking back down… There’s a bunch of blackberry seeds floating in the small layer of krausen up on top. At the same time my brain is asking questions like, “what is that floatie thing there? What the hell is that? Should that look like that?” :cheers:

If anything this is going to force me to get an acid/6 1/2 gal carboy. With the action I got from the hefeweizen I brewed a couple months ago… I wish I could have actually seen it. Or maybe I don’t?! :mrgreen:

#9

Nah, the action is part of the fun. That’s why I made sure to get a 6 1/2 gal. carboy before only recently getting a 5 gal. glass (in addition to a bucket or two).

#10

Awesome idea. I’m really interested to see how your beer comes out. I just recently got into home brewing and brewed the honey wiezen. Youve inspired me to experiment a little with my second batch… Keep up the good work !

#11

I too want to try adding jam to a beer. Reason being the same as why people shy away from it. I would like a nice pectin haze and mouthfeel fullness in a juicy NEIPA. So, OP, how did the jam beers turn out?? Was there any fruit flavor in them? How was the appearance and mouthfeel?

#12

I used fig jam n a beer it was a fig Porter. It did come out to dry for my liking. The next batch I used less and some dry figs turned out better. Next time I’ll probably just use the figs.

#13

Sugar… Sneezles61

#14

I’m making a fig porter… any tips? What works best for the fig flavour? Any Hop recommendations?

#15

Well it was a long time ago but from memory i would use the whole figs not jam. Figs don’t have a strong taste anyway. I never did it but i thought about adding fig newtons to a batch. @damian_winter brews using baked goods he may chime in

#16

I was thinking about using fig syrup, but it’s used to regulate your toilet trips… so might not be the best idea :smiley:

#17

Well the syrup will dry it out so keep that i mind

#18

To offset the dryness mash at158° maybe add some flaked oats and use a low attenuating yeast

1 Like
#19

Sorry for late reply Brew_cat . I got my hands in way to many things and not been on for a bit. I have brewed with Fig Newtons. I will have to look back at my notes of amounts and stuff. As for brewing with baked goods i always look for organic no perseveres low fat and low oil content. Most of the time i top cap bake goods in the mash. Once i get home later i will look at my notes on the Fig newtons. Also i have a few recipes that i use fruit jams in too.

1 Like
#20

@brew_cat . Ok so back at my notes I used one pound of fig newtons in 5.5 batch in few different recipes. Doppel bock and Belgian dark strong. Both had a nose of light fig and a cookie dough but was really subtle and almost undetectable by taste. I ended up aging both beers in secondary with one pound of organic sun dried Figs for two weeks. After aging both beers had a more pronounced fig and subtle dough smell. Both beers had a Fig candy Date wine flavor and what i would describe as sugar cookie dough flavor that was vary unique… I really enjoyed both of the beers. I also brewed a Blonde ale with honey malt and Strawberry Fig Newtons. I used 2 pounds in the mash and added lactose. This one was the best of out of the 3. Strawberry nose and sugar cookie aroma with a touch of honey. Taste lightly sweet honey and strawberry cake

1 Like
Back to Shopping at NorthernBrewer.com