Information on the Brewing of Strawberry Beer

Strawberry beer is an alcoholic beverage originally produced in Belgium that is not in fact made from fermented strawberries but is made by adding the juice of this fruit to beer. It is drunk quite a lot and many people enjoy the taste as the sweetness of the strawberry juice seems to complement the bitterness of the beer very well.

Today this beer is readily available and there are plenty of sites online where one can purchase it from. However, if you want and you make your own beer already why not have a go at making your own strawberry beer instead. There are plenty of places online that offer information and advice on how to go about producing your own strawberry flavored beer if you want.

But even before you can produce your own beer you need to make sure that you have the right equipment. What you will need is a large stainless steel pot, a carboy (large glass bottle), plastic tubing, funnel and large food grade plastic bucket. Plus a wooden spoon and thermometer and other pieces of brewing equipment such as a siphon rake and a valve for the carboy. Everything you should be able to purchase from a home brewing specialist either online or close to where you live.

Once you have all this equipment together now you can start getting together the ingredients to make your own strawberry flavored beer. Along with the strawberries you are going to need to amber hopped syrup, some dry light malt some crushed crystal malt, some leaf hops some pectin enzyme and an ale yeast starter.

Now that you have all these items you can move on to actually beginning to brew your own beer. Below are the steps you will need to follow in order to make one that is flavored with strawberries.

Step 1 - The first thing that you need to do is make up the yeast starter which will be incorporated into the beer at a later stage. To do this take a quart of water and add to it a cup of dry malt extract and then bring the water up to boiling point. Then take of the heat and let the mixture cool, once it has cooled to 90 degrees Fahrenheit you need to add the ale yeast to it stirring vigorously as you do before leaving it to stand for two hours.

Step 2 - Whist the above is standing into a gallon of water you need to steep the crystal malt before rinsing it thoroughly and then adding it to 1 to 1.5 gallons of preboiled water in which is also the hops and dry malt which you heat up and once boiling allow it to continue to boil for one hour.

Step 3 - After an hour you need to turn the heat down underneath the pot and into this you mix the strawberries which have been washed, destemmed and pureed. Mix the ingredients together thoroughly and allow the mixture to heat through for the next 15 to 20 minutes. After this time you need to remove the hops and allow the mixture remaining known as wort to cool.

Step 4 ? Once the wort has cooled place into the carboy with some cold bottled water added to it and then add into the yeast starter and either on the same day or the next you need to add the pectin enzyme. Now leave to ferment before you rack it (put it into the plastic bucket). The strawberry beer should then be left in the bucket for between 3 and 4 days before it is then bottled.