Best Way to Add Strawberry Flavor

Northern Brewer General
1

I am new to home brewing and my wife wants me to brew a lighter beer with strawberry flavor for her birthday coming up in a few months. I am thinking about doing a basic cream ale and am wondering the best way to add a strawberry flavor to it. I have been researching and it seems the best way would be to add a strawberry extract flavoring at bottling.

Can anyone verify this and/or give a suggestion on the best way to achieve this? Thanks!

2

Yes, flavor extract at bottling. http://naturesflavors.com/flavors/organ … ncentrates

Spend some time test dosing a measured quantity and scale up. Be subtle with it. You might need a pinch of red food coloring if you want some color…

3

I did a Blueberry Ale where I brewed and American Wheat and added blueberry extract at bottling. maybe there are fancier ways to use blueberries in the fermenting or something else but this seemed like the easiest and most effective. I will say it turned out pretty good. Not overpowering but you could taste it.

I am wondering if as you said above for the Strawberry one if this might just be the best route to go as well. I wonder how many strawberries you would need to get enough flavoring any other way.

actually one thing I should mention is I bottled 1/2 of the American wheat then did the extract at an adjusted level (it didn’t take much…). that way if it didn’t turn out I still had ~ 1 case of normal beer

4

[quote=“zwiller”]Yes, flavor extract at bottling. http://naturesflavors.com/flavors/organ … ncentrates

Spend some time test dosing a measured quantity and scale up. Be subtle with it. You might need a pinch of red food coloring if you want some color…[/quote]

Thanks for the advice. Would I be good going with something like this that NB offers (http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/stra … tract.html) or would it be better to try to get something from a natural food store? I have to buy the cream ale kit online anyway, so I wouldnt mind just throwing the extract in there too if it would be good.

5

just get the extract from NB. as I said above, I did the same for the blueberry ale and it turned out pretty good.

I would just grab that in the order and be done with it.

6

Just ordered the kit & extract. I will follow advice Ive read and do a half & half mix at bottling to see how the flavor works compared to the original. Ill post my results in 6 weeks or so.