Hardywood Virginia Strawberry

We greatly appreciate feedback of any kind. We like to sail uncharted waters with our beers, and as a result, can't always expect to appeal to everyone. That said, we're extremely quality conscious (with BJCP judges, Certified Cicerones and GABF judges on our team) and will not release a beer that has legitimate character flaws. Many people have told us Hardywood Virginia Strawberry is their favorite yet of our offerings. Others have told us they perceive a vinyl, phenolic or tart flavor. This is consistent with the introduction of a wild yeast to a beer. While nearly all fruit beers are made from syrups, fruit extracts, or flavoring compounds, we chose to brew Hardywood Virginia Strawberry exclusively with fresh, local strawberries. We brewed only one 40-barrel batch and added over 2,000 pounds of hand-sliced (thanks to many dedicated volunteers and employees) strawberries. In 10 years in the beer business, I haven't heard of another beer made with fresh strawberries on this scale. We didn't have much a point of reference for what the beer should or would taste like, but our brewing team is pleased with the results. We've ruled out other potential causes for these perceived flavors, as we remove chlorine from our water with an activated carbon filter, our mash and fermentation temperatures were spot on, and fresh, lab-raised Belgian white ale yeast was pitched, yielding a very healthy fermentation. In using fresh, local strawberries, our goal was to offer a beer with the freshest, most natural aroma and flavor available. We kept processing to a minimum - freezing the berries to rupture cell membranes and intensify the fruit character, then thawing them and smashing them. Before blending the berries with the beer, we added Campden tablets (used for 90 years in beer/wine/jam making) in hopes to inoculate the wild yeast that naturally lives on the skin of the berries. The alternative would be to boil or pasteurize the strawberries, which we felt would compromise their flavor. For better or worse, it seems that the wild yeasts contributed by the strawberries were not entirely inoculated and may have contributed flavors to this beer that some have found to be "weird" or "plastic-like". Given enough of this type of feedback, Virginia Strawberry may not make it back in 2013. For those who love it, enjoy it while you can. Hardywood Virginia Blackberry is finishing up beautifully, and to the best of our collective palates' ability, we cannot detect any wild yeast imparted flavors.