Most of the strawberry solids were removed after racking a third time
After having the strawberries in the secondary for over a week, I thought it was time to get ready to bottle up this batch and get started thinking about what I was interested in brewing next. Racking to a tertiary fermenter helped me leave most of the strawberry sludge behind. The color of the fruit changed dramatically and it was a rather nasty job getting the bottle completely clean again.
One day later, it was time for bottling. I was afraid I wouldn’t have enough bottles and was scrambling to make sure that I could find a home for as much of this beer as possible. Final gravity reading came in at about 1.013. It is tough for me to get a good handle on the final %ABV because of the added fruit sugars that were fermented in the secondary fermentation. The starting gravity, not taking into account the fruit, was 1.056. I’d guess that the ABV of the beer is between 5.7 and 6%. The aroma was definitely strong, dry strawberry mixed in with the more common hefeweizen aromas. I’m not sure whether this will be a favorite of mine yet. The couple sips I tried tasted decent with a more subtle strawberry flavor to it. I find the taste much more enticing than the aroma and I hope that with time in the bottle that problem will subside.
I used my brew pot as a bottling bucket
After adding priming sugar and transferring the beer into the brew pot I tried to grab any remaining pieces of fruit floating on the top with a strainer. After that it was a pretty non-eventful bottling… Just the way I like it.
Final haul was 21 12oz and 1 22oz of strawberry wheat beer. 4 days in primary, 9 days in secondary, 1 day in tertiary. These should be ready to drink in under 2 weeks.
Next up will be a spruce beer with fresh spruce tips that I picked yesterday. I’m excited to brew something that I don’t believe I’ve ever tasted.
The Apartment Brewer 