We found however, that due to her lower level of consumption it took the better part of a year or more to finish 18 or 19 bottles of a particular type. Right now she's got 9 bottles of Raspberry-flavored, 14 Peanut Butter, and 37 Cherries in Honey plus all the ones I drink that she mostly likes.
My experience with fruit-beers is that adding cans of Oregon fruit yields a more-cidery brew with little fruit flavor no matter when you add it, and it's $3 a can which would be $6 or more per 5 gallon batch. The Peanut Butter flavor added with Lorann flavoring yields a very nice result - my LHBS sells a dram (5 gallon batch) for $2.99. It's added at time of bottling.
Anyway, I'm embarking on an experiment that I thought some might be interested in. Lorann, the company that makes the flavorings happens to be a Michigan company and sells them for $1.40 instead of $2.99. They have a lot of flavors. They sell them in 1 dram sizes, 1 oz sizes (including additional flavors) and 4 oz sizes. They also sell eyedroppers that fit the bottles and replace the caps.
A dram (0.0625 ounces, 16 drams in an ounce) contains 57 drops. When I brew a 5 gallon recipe, I get around 600 ounces or 50 bottles. Therefore, if I put the entire dram it would work out to 1.14 drops per bottle. I'm planning on ordering about 8-10 flavors, plus droppers. I am brewing a Fruit Wheat Beer (6 pounds of wheat LME, 0.5 pounds of torrified wheat, 4 oz of Crystal 10, 0.5 pounds of flaked oats, and 1 oz of Wilamette with S-05) and leaving the fruit out. Then, at time of drinking a brew, we'll put one drop in the glass, then pour the beer. For the wheat beer I'm ordering Apricot, Blackberry, Cherry, Peach, and Raspberry. For my Oatmeal Stout I'm ordering Chocolate, Coffee, and Peanut butter. I'm also ordering Orange to try with a Blue Moon clone.
The beauty of this idea is you don't have to commit an entire batch of beer, or even 1/2 batch (2.5 gallon bottling slimline), to a flavor, and then either it doesn't go fast enough or you don't like the result. You can also experiment on how much to add, and if it's awful you've wasted $1.40, not a 1/2 or full batch of beer. And you can combine flavors, like a drop of Apricot and a drop of Peach.
Lorann flavors do not go bad. They lose potency over about 3 years, so worse case you might have to add more in a few years if that flavor is still in your inventory. And if you really like a flavor, you can buy the bigger sizes which are much more economical (1 oz is the same price as 3 drams which is more than 5 times the quantity, 4 oz is the same price as 10 drams but is 6 times the quantity and is the same price as 3 oz, so you get an ounce for free).
I'll be trying these in the coming months (not brewing the wheat until early March for late April consumption), and will update how the results come out at that time.
If anyone sees a flaw in this plan, please speak up - I haven't ordered yet.
