Cherries, Cherries And More Cherries!

[Phrak]

Ladies and gents,
Visting the local markets this afternoon, I came across a stall-holder selling fresh(ish) cherries for $2/kg.

I've been meaning to brew a cherry beer (of some description) for some time now, but the cherries were always up around $6.95/kg.

Needless to say, that when I saw the cherries at $2/kg, I kind-of got a bit too excited.... and bought 10kg of them :blink:

I've read and heard a lot of different quantities of fruit to use in beers. At this stage, I think I might start out with 2kg of cherries per 22L batch, during secondary fermentation, and keep the beer on the cherries for 2-3 weeks.

Now, my questions to the gallery - Any suggestions on a beer (or three or four) to match cherries? I'm thinking maybe a Blonde and also maybe bottling a stout or porter as well for the winter. Also considering a rough Duvel-style in the future.

I guess I could always freeze the cherries for when I need to use them.

Ideally I'd like to brew 'something' this coming Wednesday, if possible. I know this grain selection below is clearly wrong for the three beer-styles I listed above, but I'm happy to hear other suggestions

I've got heaps of Marris Otter and 1/2kg Light Munich in the grain bin, plus a bit of medium Crystal.
I've got heaps of Cascade, Amarillo and Pride of Ringwood, and a little Saaz, Hallertau Mittlefraue (sp?) & Northdown.
I've got dry US56, S04 and W34/70 (stand-back, HUGE selection I know! )

Going to have a crack at Beertools to see what I can come up with, but I can always no-chill the batch(es) and order a better suited liquid yeast and pitch when it arrives.

I open the floor to the forum :super:
Tim.

 

[Screwtop]

You could PM Bindi, he makes a fantastic cherry beer, doubt you'll get the secret recipe but he may be able to make some suggestions as to malt yeast etc.

 

[bindi]

You could PM Bindi, he makes a fantastic cherry beer, doubt you'll get the secret recipe but he may be able to make some suggestions as to malt yeast etc.

PM sent with the malt bill and a few little tricks. Enjoy
I don't mind it, it's just everyone else loves it, I give to guests.

 

[craig maher]

I open the floor to the forum :super:
Tim.

Probably doesn't fit with any of your listed ingredients but how about KREIKBEIR the classic cheery beer?

Craig

 

[Phrak]

PM sent with the malt bill and a few little tricks. Enjoy
I don't mind it, it's just everyone else loves it, I give to guests.

Cheers for that Bindi. I'll need to get a whole new grain bill for your Wit, but it'll definitely be on the list for these Cherries.

Probably doesn't fit with any of your listed ingredients but how about KREIKBEIR the classic cheery beer?
Craig

Thanks Craig, yeah I found out that Kriek was the Belgian (I think?) word for Cherry after my OP. It's opened up a whole new range of search results! :beer:

Keep the suggestions coming folks! :super:
Tim

 

[mika]

IIRC the Kriek Beer is a lambic. Lots of hassle to reproduce one of those.

 

[Adamt]

Kriek is the Dutch word for 'Sour Cherry'. There are plenty of beers with "kriek" in them, the most widely available is in Bellevue Kriek, a sweetened cherry blended lambic.

Something to remember with fruit, it usually comes out very dry as all the sugars in the fruit ferment out. If youre going to keg it, i remember someone suggesting to filter the beer before adding the fruit to infuse, then keg it to keep the sweetness in.

 

[Stuster]

How about a cherry porter? :chug:

 

[Phrak]

How about a cherry porter?

Stu, most definitely! That was one of my first thoughts

Thanks for everyone's suggestions & recipes so far. There's certainly a wide variety to choose from!

At 2kg/batch, I can do up to 4 brews (I bagged and weighed the cherries this morning - only 8kg :angry.
So I'm thinking:
* Cherry Blonde
* Cherry Porter / Choc/Cherry Porter
* Generic Cherry Ale
* SPARE?

Fairly un-imaginative I know, but I'll have trouble getting the finance minister to approve more grain purchases so soon since my $300 last order!

Just need to figure out some hops that match these beers and cherries now.
Thinking:
* Blonde - Bitter to 30odd IBU with Saaz & a bit of Hallertau @ -30mins, late-hop with maybe 10g Hallertau @ -10mins. Might do 3kg of cherries for this one.
* Generic ale - Bitter with Goldings to 40odd IBU @ -60mins, late-hop with 10-15g Goldings at -10mins.
* Porter - Fuggles to bitter? Goldings to finish?

Keep the suggestions comin!
Tim.

 

[Malnourished]

Keep the suggestions comin!

I ranted quite a bit about cherries here.

IMO, you'd probably be better off doing three batches or less. 2kg/batch seems like it'd be pretty subtle to me. Seeing as you've got that many cherries you may as well vary the intensity of cherry flavour, plus 80+L of cherry beer is quite a lot!

But anyway, one recipe I've long been tempted by is "Mr Boing Boing" in Radical Brewing - it's a cherry barley wine and sounds really good. That said, I recently picked some fresh Morellos and they're gonna end up in a stout and some kind of strongish wheaty Belgian-type thing... so obviously I'm not that sold on the idea.

As for hops, personally I'd keep flavour additions to a minimum and bitterness on the low end. I think hops clash with the acidity of cherries somewhat. 40IBUs seems pretty high in "Generic Cherry Ale" unless it's gonna have a relatively high OG.

That's what I'd do, at least...

 

[MVZOOM]

I dunno about the Kriek, Phark. It's not something that I enjoy lot of, one after dinner is nice but I think a full keg would do your brain in. Plus it is certainly a lambic of sorts, hense pain in brewing.

I spoke to Gerard at NDB, he intoned that to get enough cherry power into the brew, hop aroma and flavour will suffer, so he suggested throwing a handful of 'whatever' in at 60mins and letting it do the bittering work - basically don't worry about staged hop additions.

I'll do a pilsner based 'Cherry Champion' with w34/70, and dry hop with a decent hit of Phark sourced cherry madness.

Basically:

4KG JWPilsner
1KG Wheat Malt (mmm, pink glass lacing?)
1 x handful Saaz Flowers
2-3kg Cherry dry hop in secondary

I may even bust out some bottles and only keg 10l or so, bottling the rest.

So, when should we bust our cherries, so to speak? Maybe get Duff or someone in Hills involved and have a cherry busting threesome?

Cheers - MIke

 

[Jazzafish]

Are you going to boil up any of the cherrys or use some sodium met to kill off any possible infections from the fruit?

I've been thinking of making a strong ale or barley wine with cherrys for a while... which is the motivation for my question

 

[Ross]

I made this one with Blackberries & it turned out rather well. I reckon cherries would go very nicely as well.
The liquid yeast was probably a waste, as it's character was swamped by the berries & added little to the finished beer.

Blackberry hefe
Weizen/Weissbier


Type: All Grain
Date: 8/11/2006
Batch Size: 26.00 L
Boil Size: 33.64 L
Boil Time: 90 min
Brewhouse Efficiency: 85.0

Ingredients

Amount Item Type % or IBU
2.50 kg Wheat Malt, Malt Craft (Joe White) (3.5 EBC) Grain 53.2 %
1.70 kg Pale Malt, Galaxy (Barrett Burston) (3.0 EBC) Grain 36.2 %
0.50 kg Munich Malt 1 (17.7 EBC) Grain 10.6 %
10.00 gm Bramling Cross [8.60%] (60 min) Hops 8.5 IBU
20.00 gm Bramling Cross [8.60%] (10 min) Hops 6.2 IBU
1.00 tsp Table Salt (Boil 90.0 min) Misc
2.00 kg Blackberries (Secondary 7.0 days) Misc
1 Pkgs Hefeweizen Ale (White Labs #WLP300) Yeast-Wheat

Beer Profile

Est Original Gravity: 1.048 SG
Measured Original Gravity: 1.048 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.012 SG Measured Final Gravity: 1.012 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 4.7 % Actual Alcohol by Vol: 4.7 %
Bitterness: 14.7 IBU
Est Color: 7.2 EBC

 

[Phrak]

To answer each post in turn:

Mal, Thanks for the link. I had already read most of it, but it's great to have a re-read. I agree that the quantity of cherries I propsed per batch might be too little. What would you suggest, at least 3kg ber batch? Also agree on keeping the hopping bitterness levels low. Would you (personally) think 30ish IBU's is ok?

Mike (MVZOOM), yeah I figured that the cherry-power would stand-out, which is why I was thinking of some of the cleaner hops for bittering and just a bit of the same for taste & aroma later on. For our Cherry Blonde Floozy (we are sharing her, after-all :blink Saaz would definitely be a goer, and I reckon the Hallertau at the end would be a nice finisher.

Jazza, Yes! I'll definitely be sanitising these little buggers. God-knows these cherries are well over-ripe. I picked out most of the rotten, furry ones, but there'll undoubtedly be a few I missed.
I was planning on de-stalking, then boiling the cherries (in minimal water) for maybe 15mins and skimming all the crap off the top during the boil. Then just tip the lot into the secondary fermenter.
But, as always, I'm keen to hear any other ideas.

Ross, How was the Brambling Cross with the raspberries. I've never really experienced this hop before.

Thanks again all
Tim.

 

[Ross]

Ross, How was the Brambling Cross with the raspberries. I've never really experienced this hop before.

Thanks again all
Tim.

Phrak,

BX has a berry taste, so thought It would make a nice backing to the berries & it did
Keep the bittering low, the fruit will give you plenty of tart bitterness.

cheers Ross

 

[Stuster]

I'm not sure that boiling them is a good idea, Phrak. Boiling them will extract pectins, giving you very cloudy beer. Then again, infection from the fruit would definitely be worse. Freezing is a common way of dealing with them, but not sure if that would work if they are very over-ripe. According to Designing Great Beers you can deal with the pectins by adding the enzyme pectinase. Anybody know anything about that?

Also, that book recommends a BU:GU ratio of 0.5 for a fruit beer, with possibly one aroma addition. So, if you're doing a 1050 beer, 25IBUs should be about it.

 

[Malnourished]

Mal, Thanks for the link. I had already read most of it, but it's great to have a re-read. I agree that the quantity of cherries I propsed per batch might be too little. What would you suggest, at least 3kg ber batch? Also agree on keeping the hopping bitterness levels low. Would you (personally) think 30ish IBU's is ok?

Well, it appears I'm a fair bit out of whack with what others like in cherry beers. I generally go for ~2kg/5L, which is all your cherries in one batch! Depends on whether you want a subtle cherry character or CHERRY beer I suppose. My point was that you have enough cherries to try both approaches in different batches.

As for hopping, it depends entirely on your malt bill and OG. 30IBUs in a 1.040 wheat beer would be way too much, not so in a 1.060 porter. Just do whatever makes you happy though because you're gonna have to drink it.

Personally I wouldn't boil them either, but if you've got rotting ones in there I'm not sure what I'd do. I just chuck them straight in - acidity and alcohol in beer keep it safe - but I'm not sure what I'd do with dodgy fruit. I'd probably chuck them in anyway - live on the edge! :beerbang: Freezing won't sanitise, by the way. It's suggested as a way of rupturing cells walls to enable the yeast to get at the fruits sugars more readily.

 

[Phrak]

Cheers for all the suggestions guys

I've been doing a bit of research on sanitation methods for fruit. This research paper, studied various hot-water treatments vs various chemical treatments for sanitising citrus fruits.

Note: a 5 log reduction is the FDA's 'rule' for the reduction of bacteria to what's considered a safe level. From memory, it represents a 100,000x decrease.

<extract from article>
Both hot water and chemical treatments reduced the presence of E. coli. However, a 5 log reduction was observed from immersing the fruit in hot water at either 80 [degrees] C for one minute or 70 [degrees] C for two minutes, while there was only a 1.8-3.1 log reduction from the sanitizing solution. No significant flavor differences were found between juice extracted from non-heated fruit and fruit heated for one to two minutes. However, differences were observed between juice extracted from non-heated fruit and fruit that had been heated for two to four minutes.

The positive results of the study show that a rapid hot-water immersion technique may be used on raw fruits and vegetables to reduce fruit surface and initial juice microbial loads. To rectify the problem of taste changes, the temperature treatment should be controlled to limit the amount of time necessary that will still reduce the microflora.

Another effective method that's been suggested is to soak for 24hrs in Sodium Metabisulphite, aka Campden tablets. Although I've also read that Sodium Met is not a sanatising solution, so I'm not sure who to believe.

I guess it also comes down to if I was using the cherries during Primary or Secondary fermentation.

If I was using them in Primary, I'd probably wash the cherries in cold first to get rid of the majority of surface crap, then cool the wort to 70-80C and use a hop-bag to dunk the cherries in for 2mins. I'd probably then put them in a sealed container while the wort no-chilled overnight and then dump the cherry bag in the fermenter and rack the wort in on top.

If I was using them in secondary, I don't think I could justify the energy cost of heating up water just to sanitise the cherries. I'd probably still wash them in cold water then use a Sodium Met solution to sanitise. Mind-you, I guess it only needs a few litres of water which should heat up relatively quickly & cheaply...

So yeah, I'm not sure what I'm going to do at the moment.
I'll put my draft recipe up in the next post.

 

[Phrak]

Draft recipe:

Recipe: Cherry Ale

Brewer: Tim

Asst Brewer: 

Style: Fruit Beer

TYPE: All Grain

Taste: (35.0) 



Recipe Specifications

--------------------------

Batch Size: 22.00 L	  

Boil Size: 27.13 L

Estimated OG: 1.054 SG

Estimated Color: 4.8 SRM

Estimated IBU: 14.9 IBU

Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.0 %

Boil Time: 60 Minutes



Ingredients:

------------

Amount	   Item										   Type		% or IBU  

4.50 kg	  Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM)			   Grain	   90.0 %	

0.50 kg	  Wheat, Torrified (1.7 SRM)					 Grain	   10.0 %	

30.00 gm	 Fuggles 05 [4.00%]  (60 min)				   Hops		17.7 IBU  

20.00 gm	 Hallertauer Mittelfrueh 05 [4.10%]  (5 min)	Hops		1.7 IBU   

3.00 kg	  Cherrys, Fresh (Boil 5.0 min)				  Misc				  





Mash Schedule: My Mash

Total Grain Weight: 5.00 kg

----------------------------

Comments? I'm not really sure about the torrified wheat at this stage - mainly cos I don't have any on-hand!

Tim

 

[Phrak]

No comments on anything I've said above? :huh: