Preparing Strawberries for addition to wheat beer

I have a friend who gardens and every year I get a ton of free strawberries from him. So this year I thought I would try to make a strawberry wheat beer.

My questions is, what is the best way to prepare them for use? I plan to add them to the secondary. I've everything from freezing to putting them in hot water (162 degrees) to doing something with campden tablets? What works best?

Also if anyone has a great recipe for an American style Wheat they can share that would be great. I haven't found one that I really like yet.

Supposedly freezing them is enough, but I would feel more comfortable heating them up before adding them to a secondary. I'm not sure how much flavor you will get from them, I think it's around 1lb fruit/ 1 gallon beer. I would also look into strawberry extract for bottling to make the flavor just right incase the strawberry flavor is lacking, which I've read that's what can happen with fruit in a secondary.
I'll be making a blueberry cream ale, and jsut going with the extract at bottleing, because I dont want to have purple beer, haha.

I think you will find you get more flavor out of fresh strawberries than you do from those sold in the freezer of the grocery store. That said, I do use the 1 lb strawberries/1 gal. beer.

I made a strawberry wheat last year using fresh locally grown strawberries and it turned out fantastic. I just used a basic American wheat recipe that was recommended by the owner of my LHBS that he said would be a good fruit wheat recipe. Here is the extract version of the beer:


OG: 1.052
FG: 1.014

Ingredients:

Malt Base:

6 lbs. Dry/ 7.2 Liquid Wheat Malt Extract

Specialty Grains:

0.5 lbs Torrefied Wheat
.25 lbs Crystal 10L


Hops:
1 oz. Saaz (60 min)


Suggested Yeast: White Labs American Hefeweizen Ale

I'm assuming you know the steps for extract brewing.

For the strawberries, I cut and freeze 5 lbs of berries. Then after fermentation is complete, I thaw the berries and heat them in a large saucepan to 120F. You wouldn't need to heat the berries though. I choose to for peace of mind in killing off any nasties that might be lingering and also because heating the berries breaks them down a bit and releases more juices and flavor.

Once the berries have been heated to 120F, I then let them cool to around 80F or so. I then take a 5 gal. paint strainer bag that I sanitize in StarSan (I get them at Lowes) and dump the berries into the sack. I do this over the fermenting bucket so the juices drip into the bucket. Once the berries are in the bag, I tie it with fishing line tied to the bucket handle and then dump the bag into the bucket. I then let it ride for another 7-10 days before I bottle.

You can always add strawberry extract to taste when you are bottling. Personally, I don't like the taste of extracts so I didn't use any and mine turned out very flavorful without adding any extract fwiw.

I've since started doing AG using Brew In A Bag and have converted this recipe to AG and can't wait to brew this AG but we are still waiting for fresh strawberries to come in here in Ohio...

Unless you're adding a whole lot of strawberries, you could always soak them in some vodka for a few days, then add them (with or without vodka) to the secondary. It won't make a substantial contribution to your ABV content.

Make your own strawberry extract.

Freeze however many strawberries you want (I typically do about 2 lbs of fruit).

Thaw slightly and coarsely blend them with some everclear (I use about 2 tbsp per pound)

Put the mixture in mason jars and let sit for a week in the fridge, shaking every once in a while

Add entire contents to secondary in a hop bag, let sit for two weeks to avoid tertiary.

Ive done this with grapefruit and mangoes, and both have worked very well. You get fruit flavor, but its not overpowering.

I planted 60 strawberry plants this year to make wine. Not sure how many lbs ill get since they are first year plants but hoping to have enough left over to make a strawberry wheat beer. I also have a big peach tree in the backyard I'm going to utilize. I also just planted a bunch of pumpkin plants over the weekend. Going to make some pumpkin beers this year. Instead of just adding pumpkin to the beer I'm going to mash in one or multiple pumpkins. Anyways sorry to jack your thread. I'm on the lookout for a good strawberry wheat beer all grain recipe as well. I've only made a few wheat beers so far so I don't know much about them