Black Currant in Stout?

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Sneaker

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Years ago when I was in Ireland, I enjoyed many a pint of Guinness with Black Currant added to it.

I would like to experiment with currants in a stout recipe, but I can't find any online. The recipes I've seen are for fruit beers, or wheats or lighter ales.

If I were to add black currant to a stout recipe, what form would I use? I have some black currant "nectar," and you can buy dried currants at the grocery store. The stuff they use in Ireland is, I believe, Ribena Blackcurrant Syrup, but I don't know if it's available in the States.

Any ideas? Thanks.
 
fresh fruit is always better than extract, syrups, or dried fruit. if you cant get fresh try frozen. when you do get the fruit you will have to puree it and freeze it to get all the juices out of it. add it to the secondary and rack the beer onto it with a tsp of pectic enzyme. don't be afraid to add several pounds of fruit. depending on how strong of a taste you want and how strong the flavor of the fruit itself is the amounts to add may very.
 
The "zante currants" sold in the grocery stores are NOT actual currants, they're really just raisins made from zante grapes. Here is a link for pure black currant juice: http://www.knudsenjuice.com/products/just_juice/just_black_currant

I've never tried currants/juice in a stout, but I've experimented with the juice in wine. There's a LOT of ascorbic acid in black currants, something like 250-300% the USRDA per serving. I had to use calcium carbonate to try to reduce the acid.

Currants have a great flavour & I can easily see how they could go well in a stout recipe. I've tried the cassis (black currant) lambic & it's quite tasty. I use huckleberries with robust porter in a BBQ sauce recipe, I'll bet huckleberries or blueberries would work well in a stout too.

You might try some taste testing by adding a measured amount of juice to a measured amount of stout, that should give you a basic idea as to the amount to add. Regards, GF.
EDIT: I'd think a sweet stout recipe would be the best to try adding currants/juice to; the non-fermentable sugars will help to balance the acid from the fruit/juice. Regards, GF.
 
Can you elaborate?

obviously running the fruit through the blinder will rip open the fruit giving the yeast better access to the sugars in the fruit and allow the flavor of the fruit to mix with your beer. freezing does an even more efficient way of breaking apart the cells making it even easier for the yeast to do their job.
 
Years ago when I was in Ireland, I enjoyed many a pint of Guinness with Black Currant added to it.

I would like to experiment with currants in a stout recipe, but I can't find any online. The recipes I've seen are for fruit beers, or wheats or lighter ales.

If I were to add black currant to a stout recipe, what form would I use? I have some black currant "nectar," and you can buy dried currants at the grocery store. The stuff they use in Ireland is, I believe, Ribena Blackcurrant Syrup, but I don't know if it's available in the States.

Any ideas? Thanks.


I was thinking of adding a dash of Ribena Blackcurrant Syrup to each bottle at botteling i.e. the same amount they put in your pint of Guinness in the irish pubs.
Do you think this would work or is it better to add it to the secondary fermentor? What about adding it to the keg???
 
Where can you find the true black currant that's used in England and Ireland? I've not been able to locate any here in the US.
 
I can get Ribena concentrate in the UK portion of the ethnic section of some of my local supermarkets (but it's rather expensive for what it is). I mix it into seltzer water. Reminds me of my youth.
 
I hadn't thought about that! There's really only a couple of "international" stores about two hours drive away. I'll have to check their website. [emoji482]
 
If you can get the right product then honestly you are probably getting closer to what you remember by adding it in the glass rather than the bottle. A syrup will have sugar that will ferment out in the bottle and lose the touch of sweetness added back with an addition in the glass. You should also look at whether the syrup has any preservatives added. Sometimes preservatives added to a beer are diluted enough to not inhibit fermentation which can result in creating some weird and unpleasant flavors.
 

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