dragonmaster42
Senior Member
- Joined
- Nov 26, 2008
- Messages
- 353
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I found strawberries on sale for 0.75 a pound at Wally World!! Not the best I've seen - some overripe, some under, but overall decent. So, spent a couple nights cleaning 26 lbs of them (the girl at the checkout counter didn't say anything but gave me a strange look) and throwing them in the freezer for a couple days. After thawing and a quick spin in the blender, I dumped them into my 15gl primary. Mistake #1, I didn't use a bag for the pulp. Anyway, I added the kmeta, pectic enzyme, yeast nutrient, acid blend (the standards), 5.5 pounds of sugar and water (sg was 1.090) and let it sit overnight. Ended up with it a hair over 6.5 gallons total. I also made a yeast starter at the same time (Lavlin 71B(?), some water and a tsp of sugar in a large glass).
The next morning before I left for work the starter was going great guns and was pitched. I got home late that night and opened the primary for peek and a stir and the foam/krausen was 1/2 inch from the top! At least 9" thick!! I've never had it go that high before. I stirred it back and for the next several days it was a more "normal" couple inches - stirring once in the morning and once at night.
After 5 days, the hydrometer read 1.005, so racked it into the secondary. This is where the lack of a bag for the pulp really got me. I ended up with barely 4 gallons of liquid and 2 1/2 gallons of a semi-solid, tan, (and almost scary), gelatious blob that smelled wonderfully like strawberries and yeast. Next time, I'm either using a bag or taking the fruit anda few bottles of wine and calling on Waldo to borrow his steam juicer.
Although, on a whim, as I was tossing the blob, I put a coffee cup full of it in a bowl, added about 2-3 cups of flour, a tsp of sugar and a tsp of oil. Mixed and kneaded it and let it rise for about an hour and cooked it at 350 for 40 min. It made a small, rather ugly, buttasty loaf of Strawberry Blob bread.
The next morning before I left for work the starter was going great guns and was pitched. I got home late that night and opened the primary for peek and a stir and the foam/krausen was 1/2 inch from the top! At least 9" thick!! I've never had it go that high before. I stirred it back and for the next several days it was a more "normal" couple inches - stirring once in the morning and once at night.
After 5 days, the hydrometer read 1.005, so racked it into the secondary. This is where the lack of a bag for the pulp really got me. I ended up with barely 4 gallons of liquid and 2 1/2 gallons of a semi-solid, tan, (and almost scary), gelatious blob that smelled wonderfully like strawberries and yeast. Next time, I'm either using a bag or taking the fruit anda few bottles of wine and calling on Waldo to borrow his steam juicer.
Although, on a whim, as I was tossing the blob, I put a coffee cup full of it in a bowl, added about 2-3 cups of flour, a tsp of sugar and a tsp of oil. Mixed and kneaded it and let it rise for about an hour and cooked it at 350 for 40 min. It made a small, rather ugly, buttasty loaf of Strawberry Blob bread.
