"Look Charlie Murphy, the milk's gone bad."

This is my second attempt to make a quality batch of beer.

I started with an extract brew kit for an 8.1% ABV stout. I added about 4 oz of sweet baker's chocolate, 6 oz of semi-sweet baker's chocolate and about 6 oz of unsweetened organic cocoa powder to the boil. I also added one pound of lactose milk sugar and a "BrewVent" alcohol boost kit supplied by Austin Homebrew Store.


After two weeks in primary, I racked onto 49 oz of Oregon sweet cherry puree and 8 oz of organic Guana cocoa nibs. After about 5 weeks in the secondary better bottle, the krausen has thickened and the beer smells funky. I am afraid the fruit has rotted and will now create a sour cherry stout. This is far removed from what I had initially envisioned when I set out to create what I Christened "Milk Chocolate Covered Cherry Stout."


Additionally, the nibs and cherry puree has remained almost completely at the bottom of the carbory since shortly after racking.


The final step will be to add 2 oz of black cherry extract with the priming sugar at bottling.


As always, thanks for the help. And, if someone can get that Revvy guy to post on my message thread, I would be honored.

The fruit would not rot if it's in your beer and you've kept everything sanitary. That's a lot of sugar to add in the secondary (and a lot of extra sugar in the recipe going into primary) and fermentation has restarted, explaining the krausen. The funky smell may be a by product of the fermenting fruit or who knows what, you added a LOT of stuff to this recipe. I think you're going to just have to sit on this for awhile and see what happens.

I'm curious to see how this ends up.

Holy cow. I agree with hogwash, I don't think it's rotten fruit unless something went awry elsewhere, but there's a lot going on in your beer. I assume this is a 5 gallon batch? Gonna be a while until all the flavors mellow and it becomes palatable. But maybe you'll come out with something really special (or maybe you'll learn a little goes a long way for next time )