Cherry Wheat Beer

[shacked]

I was given a large bag of cherries at Christmas time and thought I'd give a Cherry Wheat Beer a crack. I used a pretty simple grist of equal parts wheat and pale with a handful of light crystal with a bittering addition of Willamette. It's fermenting away nicely with WLP320 - about 22L. Cheers to Barleyman for the great ingredients and service!

In December, I pitted the cherries and threw them in the freezer - there is about 1.4kg of them. I was planning on racking the beer onto the cherries once fermentation calms down.

My question is whether I should heat the cherries up to +80C and cool them down before racking or whether I'm OK to just rack onto the defrosted fruit??

 

[TimT]

I'd just rack onto the defrosted fruit; the alcohol should kill any residual bugs. If not you could douse the cherries in a bit of vodka for a few days to kill off the bugs. Better than losing all the fresh cherry flavours in a near-boil.

 

[oglennyboy]

I've just finished trying a couple of different approaches with cherries. One was a soak in sodium met, pitting then freezing, then on thawing putting in a steamer for 10mins. The other was just putting the thawed pitted cherries straight into secondary. The secondary now has a lovely pellicle (I'm gonna say its lovely as it is now the basis for a funky beer, not a garden beer!), while the steamed carry-on is fine.
These cherries however had a few in the batch that were squishy, mouldy etc, so I expected that there would be some risk. I don't think beer strength is enough to kill the bugs (even at 8% like the infected one is), and I've found if cherries are in primary with a massive vigorous yeast to out-compete the nasties, all the cherry character except colour - which will then end up quite muted anyway - is blown away.
cheers

 

[manticle]

There's an article here which suggests while boiling is bad, a 1 min soak in 80 deg C water is desirable

http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/articles/article39.html

There is a link to a study on pasteurisation of fruit and flavour effects within that may be of interest.
I've only ever added fruit to funked/sour type beers so I've never worried but I'd seriously consider it for non-funk.

 

[bradmccoy]

I recently addrd some fresh berries to a boild and it was disasterous. Really killed that nice fresh juicy cherry flavour.

 

[shacked]

Thanks for the input guys!

OK, I think what I'm going to do is throw the frozen cherries into a pot and bring the lot up to slightly over 80C for a minute or two before chilling rapidly and add to the secondary.

 

[manticle]

I'm pretty sure you can just get the water to 80 then dunp the fruit in. If you bring it up to heat with the fruit in, I reckon you'll stew them as they'll be at 50, 51, 52, 53-70,71, 72, etc through the process. Have a look at pasteurisation temperatures and times. I think a minute or two in the low to mid 70s should see you right as long as all the fruit surface is properly covered. Did you check the linked article?

 

[shacked]

Hi Manticle,

The article link ends up here: http://www.search.com/search

Do you think I should defrost to room temp, then dunk into the 80C water for a min and then remove the fruit, chill fruit and add? Should I also add the water?

 

[manticle]

Bugger. I'm sure it was a working link last time I checked (few months ago at most).

The quoted bit in italics should give you an idea though.

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.

 

[shacked]

Thanks mate.

 

[menoetes]

Resurrecting an old thread here like a lightning bolt into Frankensteins monster...

Does anyone have an experience using tinned or jar preserved cherries in their beer? My concern is that the 'syrup' they are preserved in might add a big slug of extra sugar to the beer - drying it out.

However when checking the nutrition info on the jar preserved cherries it contained 1g less sugar per 100g than the frozen cherries and a jar of cherries is better value for money than frozen.

I'm looking to add cherries to a witbier in secondary and jars/tins have the added bonus or already being pasturized.

I'm just looking for advice on whether to go with the jar/tin including syrup or the jar/tin minus the syrup or just cough up the extra cash for the frozen cherries...

 

[menoetes]

Hmmm, I think I found the info I needed here - I might just pay the extra for the frozen berries.