xgeek

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I am thinking about making a Belgian "Cherry Tripel". Anyone ever make something like this as an all extract or extract w/grains? Any help with ideas is greatly appreciated.

sonetlumiere85

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If I were you I'd start with a recipe for a tripel, then add cherries after racking the tripel off the trub. That's how I made my kriek and it turned out great. I used 7 lbs (2 large cans) cherry extract from oregon extracts. If you want you can modify the tripel recipe to take out some fermentables, since the cherries will add some alcohol to the final product.

edit: so for example, a simple recipe like this would probably suit you well. http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f73/triple-six-tripel-93237/

Jack

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Also, I hear that you can get a better almond/kirsch undertone to the beer if you pit your cherries and add them to the carboy (it improves liquid-pit contact). If you're using pitted cherries from a jar or something, get mahlab. It's the pit of a sour cherry and can either be found online, at a specialty spice store, or at a middle-eastern market. Damn good secret ingredient.

xgeek

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So does the 7lbs of cherry ferment out completely. I thought after racking to secondary most of the yeast was gone and fermentation was mostly complete. Thanks for the quick response.

xgeek

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Did your Kriek end up with Alot of cherry taste? I really just want a mild cherry flavor or I think the tripel would end up way to sweet.....any thoughts?

Jack

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The sweetness will be severely mitigated if you use 100% sour cherries.

sonetlumiere85

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My kriek was just Northern Brewer's "dawson's kriek" recipe. I love the level of cherry it has - nice reddish hue, cherry in the nose, and a real sour bite from the lambic blend yeast I used.

The yeast is always in there unless you filter or wait a long, long time. Bottle conditioning depends entirely upon yeast. When I added my cherry extract, I had to throw a blowoff onto the carboy because the fermentation was so vigorous, even though with the base beer it was a mild krausen. It will likely ferment out at least 65-70%, depending on the yeast you use.

The residual sweetness would come from the cherries not fermenting out entirely. If you want to make sure you don't have too much sweetness, you could easily drop the extract to just 3.5 lbs (one can from Oregon extracts). If you make a fairly substantial tripel and use a good hearty yeast, you should be fine on sweet/dry balance. Definitely better to start small, though. There are fruit extracts that many people add at bottling to increase the flavor, so if you feel you need more flavor, you could always use some extract.

Also, in the case of the lambic blend I used, the beer would've been fairly sweet if I bottled after a month or so, but I aged/soured it for about 7 months. The same thing will likely happen with residual sweetness. The longer you wait to bottle after 90% of fermentation is done, the less sweet it will be.

Saccharomyces

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Depends on which strain you use; in the triple six, I used the Golden Strong Ale yeast, which is a low-flocculator. After a three week primary, there is still plenty of yeast to do the job. In fact if you use fruit in the secondary, I would probably rack to a tertiary to let it clear before bottling, to avoid getting too much sediment in the bottles.

Funny you posted on this subject.. I was thinking of trying something similar scaling down the triple six to a lower gravity and adding fruit of some sort, but at the same time adding brett for a nice long secondary fermentation. The triple by itself is rather sweet so it would be nice to have a sour component to it.

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sonetlumiere85

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One other thing I thought of in relation to fruit and fermentation: use pectic enzyme! I lost about a half gallon of kriek due to cherry sediment, not to mention having to reposition my racking wand to avoid clogging.