What to do with Cherry Juice?

I like cherries, and one day I bought enough cherry juice from a grocery store to make a gallon of something. I haven't figured out what that something is. There is a regional cidermaker who attempted to make cider from it, but said it was horrible and really was only good for backsweetening cider. I've seen another post from someone about how they used sweet cherries and it is turning out like cough syrup and laments they didn't use sour cherries. I guess I'm a little nervous it will be bad and I have to dump it, and with this recession, that doesn't seem right.

Any suggestions and/or recommended recipes? I'm open to wine, cider, or mead.

maybe Joe's Quick Grape Mead (but make it cherry instead of grape?):

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f80/joes-quick-grape-mead-57190/

I made a sour cherry wine a few years ago. It was, well, not great. It was harsh and bitter. I left it in the jug (it was one gallon from fresh sour cherries) and ignored it. I saw Ken Schramm at a conference, and he served a wonderful mead that had cherries in it. I asked him how he did it- and he said that honey made a huge difference in the smoothness. Even though I made a wine, I might try adding some honey.

I did that. The honey fermented out (I don't like sweet wines), but I was left with a decent wine in the end.

The point to this story (and I DO have one!) is to make a wine. But maybe add 1/2 cup honey as part of the fermentables. Let that ferment out, and possibly add a bit more. (I also do that with my crabapple wine).

As far as a recipe, I'd go light on acid blend and tannin powder, at least initially, until you see what kind of flavors you end up with. My winemaking idol, Jack Keller, has recipes for cherries: http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/reques61.asp to get an idea.

Maybe get a 12 ounce frozen can of Welch's 100% White Grape (without preservatives) and try something like this: http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/request206.asp

Cure your gout?

YooperBrew said:

The point to this story (and I DO have one!) is to make a wine. But maybe add 1/2 cup honey as part of the fermentables. Let that ferment out, and possibly add a bit more. (I also do that with my crabapple wine).

Click to expand...

Add a bit more honey, or add a bit more cherry juice?

CandleWineProject said:

Add a bit more honey, or add a bit more cherry juice?

Click to expand...

More honey! sorry to be so unclear.

The honey really "smooths" the flavor even if you're not sweetening the wine.

I'd add it to 3.5 lbs of honey, top to a gallon with spring water, and pitch Rc-212.

I'm betting a Melomel Like DaveAllen suggests would be really nice.

Also, I'd add a handful of golden raisins for body.

oh yes, lots of great ideas! I'm glad I asked instead of just pitching yeast.

I think your best bet would be to make a dry cherry wine, or a cherry melomel. Just my 2 cents worth. Regards, GF.

I'm a total noob, but i think there have been successes with cherry melomels (mead forum), and I believe I saw something on Jack Keller's wine site that was a cherry-based recipe.

I've drunk a good bit of cherry wine made from local sweet cherries and it's never tasted as bad as a lot of the descriptions I've read on the internet. Most of it wasn't made by me though, but some of it was.

In my own experience, I find the wine made from them to be good if the right yeast is used (EC-1118 worked great, KV-1116 wound up not so great tasting), and if it's fermented bone-dry. I think if it were made sweet, it wouldn't be so great. In fact, there's a local fruit winery that makes a sweet cherry wine that I don't like at all, but then probably 90% of everything I like is pretty dry, so there's a definite bias. There is a bit of a cough syrupy aroma that goes away with time, and they can be a little lacking in acid and rather lacking in tannin, but usually the wine winds up pretty good. And they have a lot of sugar, so you usually don't need to add all that much to bring the gravity to the right spot. I don't know about the juice you have, but I know that's how it is with the cherries grown out here. I think if it were oaked, it might resemble an oaky merlot or something. I'll try it sometime, since I get free cherries. Right now I only have one batch clearing though. I'm sure a blend of sour and sweet cherries would be great. Myself, for acid and tannin, I did the old tea and lemon thing and it wound up pretty damn good.