Cherries- Tart vs Sweet?

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Robusto

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Hi all.
So I’m planning on making a Chocolate Cherry Stout, but have a question about the cherries. In my mead making experience, I have always head that you have to use tart cherries because the sweet cherries will leave a medicinal taste in the finished product. Most of the recipes that I see for Chocolate Cherry Stouts either call for “dark” cherries or simply do not mention what type of cherries to use.

So, if you have use cherries in your beer before, do you recommend sweet or tart cherries? Does it matter? Do you adjust the IBU’s if you use tart?

Thanks for the help.
 
Tart. The tartness works really well with the roastiness.

Of course, sweet cherries would work too, it'd just taste different.
 
thanks Ty. What would you say, about a pound per gallon? Is that too much? Not enough?
 
thanks Ty. What would you say, about a pound per gallon? Is that too much? Not enough?

I did 4LB of stemmed, pitted, and halved cherries in the secondary of a 5Gal american wheat batch. I was very happy with the outcome, but others don't think there was enough cherry flavor. I like beer with a subtle fruit flavor, i don't like the fruit to overpower the beer.

In a stout, I highly doubt that 1lb/Gal would be too much.
 
Yeah, that sounds about right. I did 1.5 #/gal this year and it's too much. You can always add more if 1#/gal doesn't come through enough.
 
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