Ginger Beer with Strawberry Extract??

[GrahamB8]

Fermenting will probably eat a lot of that strawberry flavor, I would still rack onto more of them.

 

I watched a vid on a pumpkin ale the othe night and was amazed at the sheer volume of pumpkin they used and it was all due to the amount of flavor the yeast chomps through.

[Evil Clown]

Well the Ginger Beer reached a constant Gravity so I did a taste test and there was very little strawberry flavor in the ginger beer. Like GrahamB8 said the yeast chewed up nearly all of the flavor.

 

I had no Fresh Strawberries on hand so I racked the brew into a secondary FV containing 2kg of strawberries in syrup and took another gravity reading so as that I can use it to calculate the additional alcohol created in the secondary FV.

 

The brew is now slowly bubbling again. I'll report back in with the results when the brew reaches a new constant gravity.

[GrahamB8]

So is the syrup a sugar solution that the strawberries are preserved in? Just be careful your not going to make ginger wine, you've now lost the ability to easily determine the alcohol [biggrin]

[Evil Clown]

Yeah it was a sugar syrup solution. But I figured by taking a new gravity reading after adding the strawberries and syrup and then a gravity reading when it stops fermenting again i could add the gravity difference to the gravity difference from before racking to calculate the ABV or am I missing something?[crying]

[Evil Clown]

Well I couldn't get the extract or the strawberries in syrup to work and infuse the ginger beer with strawberry flavor; but I tried one last thing.

 

I went and bought a cheapish bottle of strawberry liquor added 20ml to a schooner glass and then topped it up with ginger beer from the last lot i bottled and it tastes pretty dam good. Oh and it bumps up the alcohol content too lol. I figured the brew I had plus the liquor brought it into around 6.5%abv. The liquor added about 0.33 of a standard drink to the schooner glass.

 

So the next batch of ginger beer I brew up I think I'll aim for about 4%abv after bottling, that way with the addition of the liquor a 740ml bottle should come into about 3 standard drinks.