Hey guys. so I did a strawberry Milk chocolate stout, partial mash, and i used 3 lbs of strawberries. i froze them before hand, then i added them to the boil at the last 15 minutes. they are now sitting in the primary. i didnt taste much strawberry when i tasted the wort, and i was wondering if the flavor is going to be more prominate from sitting in the primary or am i going to have to add extract? my goal is to avoid extract if i can. i believe extract flavors taste weird or can be over powering.
Probably not. Strawberry doesn’t come through very well unless you keep a lot of sugar behind in the beer and that normally requires halting fermentation before adding the strawberries and force carbonating.
you can also add more berries instead of extract. I have not brewed with strawberries and they are a pretty subtle flavor. if primary is pretty much done try adding another few lbs in the fermenter.
I have a hard time getting enough strawberry flavor in a Melomel with multiple additions in both primary and secondary - I can only imagine how difficult it would be in a stout.
I think one of the issues in this beer is that acidity is what helps bring out the strawberry, but at the same time it mutes the roast in the stout. It’s going to be tough to find the right balance.
And I’d say you need at least 2-4 times the amount of strawberries you used to get a noticeable strawberry flavor. You could try adding more in secondary, but this is one of the cases where I might suggest a good quality extract may be a better choice.
I’d agree that three pounds probably isn’t enough. But also in unfermented wort I think malt sugar will quickly overpower the berries.
Different schools of thought with fruit, but boiling any fruit for 15 minutes will drive off most of the fruit’s aroma, as will adding to primary fermentation. If you ever brew it again, I would add the thawed fruit (or puree) to a secondary fermenter and rack your beer on top of the fruit. I think you’ll notice a big difference.
Not such a big deal with strawberries (or in a stout, for that matter), but boiling any fruit that contains a significant amount of pectin can lead to pectin haze in your beer as well.
…and that ! Good call.
wow. thanks guys. thats what i was afraid of. i guess its time to start looking for a good extract
I’ve only used a fruit extract once and while it was very chemical tasting at first after several months it mellowed into something decent. If you’re willing to wait it out you might be happy with the beer.
Maybe it was the particular extract you bought. I’ve had no problem with the ones I’ve used.
Is there a brand you would recommend?
Yeah, but I can’t remember what it was! It was many years ago and my memory is fading…
I’d definitely avoid the Brewer’s Best extract/flavorings. I used one of their cherry extracts once (and one of their other flavors a different time), because I’d heard that some breweries add it at kegging/bottling to reinforce aroma and flavor. It turned a real tasting cherry beer (I’d added Oregon to secondary) into something more like the fake, nasty cough syrup thing you get from SA Cherry Wheat. Nasty. Can’t speak for any of the other brands.
In other words, no? 
I would personally attempt to add another 3-5lbs of fresh strawberries in the secondary. As some have said, I too have found the best results in using fruit during the secondary after transferring off the yeast cake. If the fresh fruit fails then buy a strawberry purée from your LHBS or nortwrhn brewer and add half to start at kegging/bottling. If that fails, then you can use extract. I wouldn’t suggest it, but do what you think would result in the desired product you’re after.
How about finding an all natural version of the prefrozen Strawberries in Heavy Syrup at a food store? That stuff tends to have almost overripe strawberries in it and you always get a good strawberry flavor out of it. Also i find adding sugar to strawberrries gets themt o exude their flavor, which has already been done in these products.
2cents,
Jeff