Sour Beer with Whole Cherries - Cyanide?

Hey All,

I hope I am putting this in the right section. I just started my first sour brew with a friend of mine. We made a wheat beer with wlp1 and then racked it into a 5 gal oak barrel with about 6 pounds of whole cherries (pits and all). We froze the cherries the night before and had to kind of mash them through a funnel because the bunghole was kind of small so they got broken up a bit more. We threw some british brett in there and some lacto.

I hadn't really thought about it until today but I know cherry pits have cyanide in them. Should I be worried about a high amount of that getting into the beer? I figured it's probably not a huge issue as many belgian brewries who make fruit beers use whole cherries and because if it was a real issue there would be warnings everywhere about it.

I am really just curious of people's opinions.

I'm sure its fine. It wont extract the cyanide plus our body can hadle small dosages of cyanide. Which turns in to thiocyanate (SCN). Dont worry it should be fine and your probably not the first person to do it and i'm sure they are alive anyway.

Yeah, I was hearing that if you leave it in there for a while the bacteria will actually break down the cherries so I was thinking that might release a bit more of that.

if your worried just rack it at a certain point so you dont have to worry

Hopper5000 said:

I figured it's probably not a huge issue as many belgian brewries who make fruit beers use whole cherries.

Click to expand...

Answered your own question.

Well ya, but "just figuring" and someone maybe knowing for a fact is a bit different... especially in regards to things that can poision you...

Everything is technically a poison in a way. Water can kill you so can ethanol the level of cyanide is pretty much nil.

well if everything is a poision then i have a lot more questions...

Often the difference between a necessary nutient and a toxin is the amount in your system, NOT saying cyanide is necessary I know some who grind up the cherry pits to add to their beer.

Here read this.

http://www.artofdrink.com/archive/research/cyanide-in-apricot-cherries-pits/

I've added whole cherries at a rate of 2lbs/gallon. Aged for 7 months on the fruit. I'm still standing, so I'd say in my experience everything worked out just fine.

Well that's good to know