Cherry Stout When Is It Finished?

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Charst

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I recently brewed a Cherry Stout (from BCS) and added a 1kg of cherries in the last 10 minutes of the boil.

The cherry flavour hasn't come through so i decided to add a 500g can of Coles whole black cherries (all skins look slightly split) in syrup on Monday 8/10.

OG was 1058, the stout was at 1016 when i added the cherries, krausen had mostly fallen in when i added the cherries, noticed a new krausen i guess come up.

Question is how long should I leave the beer on these cherries before i can bottle? hard say i have a stable Gravity if the sugars are only slowly leaching out of the cherries.


cheers
 
Is it a problem that the cherries are likely to have some wild yeast/bacteria on them when you add them in?
 
The first batch were boiled for ten minutes and I would imagine canned cherries are treated prior to canning, plus they went into an active dominant yeast environment.

I would leave at least a week so as to impart some flavour (I wouldn't expect much, you need a lot of cherries)

Just follow normal stable hydrometer reading rules, then rack off the cherries and bottle? Or rack first, then take stable readings, then bottle, if you prefer and are worried about there still being sugar present.

The yeast will consume whatever sugar is available, then become dormant.
 
@ tiprya Yes you run that risk with any fruit beers though.


As HSB said first lot were Boiled for 10, the others come direct from a can.
I was hoping to crash chill on friday and bottle the following friday.
I was planning on carbing low anyway but would rather know its finished as not to over carb.

would also rather not rack to a secondary as im short on fermentors.

i'll take some hydro samples and see where it's sitting.

EDIT Spelling
 
Coming from a can is probably OK, I thought you threw fresh ones in.

In that case, why not let the beer sit until it has the desired level of cherry flavour?

Then bottle off the cherries, and you shouldn't have any extra sugar when separated from the fruit.
 
Let us know what it tastes like too...I'm thinking of doing a Dark Cherry Stout in the future
 
I made a porter with cherries a few years ago which was a big success. Racked into secondary with around 1.5kg of jarred Cherries ("Marco Polo" brand) and left them in there for around 2 weeks. As advised by others, just check the gravity until it steadies out, but I wouldn't leave it much longer than that. I found that the cherry character is rather delicate and fades fairly quickly in the finished product, so you'll want to drink it reasonably fresh.

For the same reason it's a good idea to let the more vigorous stages of primary fermentation finish (or rack to secondary) prior to adding fruit, because you'll scrub out a lot of the flavour.
 
only reason im in a bit of a hurry is I have a week off next week so ideally i want get both the cherry stout and the T's LCBA clone into bottle and get two cubes filled ready to go. So it's either crash for 7 days and bottle next friday or shorten the crash to 5 days and let it ferment a touch longer.

Id rather less cherry flavour and a good clean stout than more cherry and less time for sh*t to settle.
 
If the fermentation kicked up again after you added the cherries to primary then I'd imagine a fair wack of the sugars will have already been "extracted" and subsequently fermented. I remember when I added cherries to secondary that they sat on the bottom of the fermenter for a while, and then started to float to the top. This seemed to coincide with the SG drop slowing down, so I'm guessing that this was a sign that the cell structure was breaking down due to the acid/alcoholic environment, and/or from the yeast consuming the sugars... essentially the fruit starting to decompose.

Did you measure your SG before and after adding the cherries? This would give you some indication of how much sugar the cherries contributed...

If you bottle before you get a steady reading then you will probably just end up with some overcarbonation. If you know how many SG points the cherries added (i.e: take a measurement) then you could try and calculate and adjust your priming sugar accordingly.

I would personally let it sit longer in the fermenter and compromise on the crash chilling... If you crash it before it starts to clear at least a bit on it's own then that's a pretty good sign that fermentation isn't complete yet, and pulling a beer off the yeast too soon is a potential recipe for acetaldehyde and other compounds. I've stopped crash-chilling my beers to no obvious detriment, but then again I'm not obsessive about clarity. For a stout it shouldn't matter much anyway...
 
If the fermentation kicked up again after you added the cherries to primary then I'd imagine a fair wack of the sugars will have already been "extracted" and subsequently fermented. I remember when I added cherries to secondary that they sat on the bottom of the fermenter for a while, and then started to float to the top. This seemed to coincide with the SG drop slowing down, so I'm guessing that this was a sign that the cell structure was breaking down due to the acid/alcoholic environment, and/or from the yeast consuming the sugars... essentially the fruit starting to decompose.

Did you measure your SG before and after adding the cherries? This would give you some indication of how much sugar the cherries contributed...

If you bottle before you get a steady reading then you will probably just end up with some overcarbonation. If you know how many SG points the cherries added (i.e: take a measurement) then you could try and calculate and adjust your priming sugar accordingly.

I would personally let it sit longer in the fermenter and compromise on the crash chilling... If you crash it before it starts to clear at least a bit on it's own then that's a pretty good sign that fermentation isn't complete yet, and pulling a beer off the yeast too soon is a potential recipe for acetaldehyde and other compounds. I've stopped crash-chilling my beers to no obvious detriment, but then again I'm not obsessive about clarity. For a stout it shouldn't matter much anyway...


SG at time I added the cherries was 1016, its back there now. This recipe also had 200g cocoa powder in it. cant say its cherry ripe but its tasting pretty nice.
BCS recipe said finished gravity should be 1018.

Same thing with the cherries they sunk when i poured them in but are floating now. certainly dont look like pulp but nor did the raspberries when i did those. easier with raspberries though they turn white.




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