Dos Amigos Jimena Strawberry Ale

"The best thing about the future is, that it comes one day at a time" Abraham Lincoln.

I've come to realize that is it almost a year since my lovely daughter Jimena was born!. 

On a sunny morning, at 6:41am to be precise, on December 22, my wife and I were bless with the miracle of live, a joy so precious that continues to bring happiness to our family every single day.

So, while my wife has started to plan the party for her 1st birth-day celebration, rushing to define the menu, hiring the catering service, looking for tables and chairs, making the invitations, buying candies for the "piñata", thinking on what would be the entertainment for the kids invited to the party, etc; the obedient husband has being assigned with a single but, very important task: listen carefully to all the wifes comments and ideas regarding the party!!!

Make sure to agree to all her "suggestions" without hesitation. Although it is a simple task it must be perform with out failure as ti will drive severe consequences.

There is only one idea that beats in the homebrewer heart when a party is at sight: what should I brew?

But, in this specific event, it is not a just a party, it is the 1st birth day celebration of my beloved daughter so, what better gift for her than a beer recipe! it is something that will endure the passing of time and that Dos Amigos Home Brewing is glad to brew for her now and teach her how to do it in the future.

So, we have decided to brew a Strewberry ale!!

Brewing with fruits can be a bit tricky, you need to be very careful on how you sanitize your fruit and you add it to your beer, also, the fruit you choose to brew has to be taken into consideration, there are fruits with very strong aromas and others have just a mild aroma.

Per definition, fruit beers should showcase the fruit, allowing it's natural aroma to fill your taste, hop aroma should be very mild or absence and malt flavors should not be perceived or overpower the fruit character.

Knowing that we need to pay close attention to these details, we brewed with enough time to allow the fruit beer proper bottle condition, it will stay in the bottle for almost 1 month before it is tasted, this will allow to remove, as much as possible, any astringency (perceived as dryness) aromas that might be developed during the fruit brewing.

Here is the recipe we brew, hope you like it and, after December 22nd we will let you know how it turn out!!! I'm sure Dos Amigos CCO will have a nice review of it :-).

5kg pale malt
1.5kg munich malt
250gr Crystal 30
100g chocolate malt
1/2oz chinnok (11.8%AA) @40min
1/2oz chinnot (11.8%AA) @20min
1 wirfloc tablet @10min
1 S04 yeast
1.1kg strawberry puree

OG: 1.052

Ok... the process is pretty much standard for the all grain beer, but the strawberry puree required to be sanitized so, it was heated just below the boiling point to avoid ruining the strawberry, be very careful when doing this.

The grain bill... in our next entry, we will surprise you with our "engineering" project for the grinding process :-)

Mash tun ready!!!

 Our hand mill... for now!!!

 if you have never done an all grain beer... you are missing a great part of brewing... the smell of the grains

 Mashing in!!!

 Dos Amigos recipe book!!!! it is worth a lot of.... well... the stickers are hard to get!!!

 Getting our worth

 Boiling

 Checking on........... hops :-)

 Strawberry puree

 OG!!! not OMG... OG :-)

 Dumping our beer in the fermenter with the beer puree in it

We added the yeast, place the lid and leave it to rest. We decided to dump the whole strawberry pure in the 1st fermenting and not to rack it; this is one way of doing it, you can follow different processes but, that is your choice!!!

See you again soon!!!

Adrian.