The Canadian Family

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.

However, before you do start to make your own beer whether flavored with strawberries or not you need to make sure that you have the right equipment. For a home brewing kit you will need a large stainless steel pot, a large glass bottle (carboy), some tubing, a funnel and large bucket all made from food grade plastic. Plus you will also need a large wooden spoon, a siphon rake, a thermometer and valve for the carboy. These items can easily be purchased online or from a specialist home brewing supplier near 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.

After you have these ingredients together with your equipment you can now start to brew your own beer and below are the steps you will need to take for making strawberry beer.

Step 1 – Make the yeast starter by boiling a cup of dry malt extract in 1 quart of water then allow it to cool until it reaches a temperature of 90 degrees Fahrenheit. When it reaches this temperature add to it ale yeast and stir it. Now let this stand for 2 hours.

Step 2 – Whilst the above mixture is left standing rinse the crystal malt which has been steeped in a gallon of water. Then take the rinsed crystal malt and put it in a pot with the hops and dry malt along with between 1 and 1.5 gallons of water. Heat this mixture up until it starts to boil and then allow it to continue to boil for a further 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 – As soon as the mixture (wort) has cooled down enough put it into the carboy and to it add the yeast starter. You can at this stage add the pectin enzyme or leave it until the following day. Then give it time to ferment correctly before then transferring to the plastic bucket. The strawberry beer should be left in the plastic bucket (racked) for between 3 and 4 days before you eventually then put it into bottles.