Brewing with fruit

Want to brew a cherry beer and don't know how to add/incorporate the fruit. I have extract brewed a few times with my kit and any recipes are appreciated! Thinking cherry wheat and then a cherry stout... Thanks!!!!

A secondary fermentation is best for a fruit beer. Do your beer as you normally would. After primary fermentation has completed, add some cherries (preferably a puree) to your secondary fermenter and rack the beer on top of the cherries. I would recomend a blow off tube for the secondary as well. As far as how much cherry, I'm not sure. If i had to guess, 3-4 #'s of a cherry puree should work just fine.

Or you could take an easier route and add cherry extract at bottling/kegging, but i always prefer the real thing.

I put one can of Oregon fruit preserve in a secondary and rack on top of that, then throw half a small bottle of extract into the bottling bucket with my sugar water.

Works great for me!

I brewed this beer last year. Follow the link. It was awesome. Just try replacing the Raspberries with cherries.

Requiem Raspberry

I also am wondering about making a cherry wheat. I have the NB wheat ale kit that came with the starter kit and I wanted to make a cherry wheat that tasted as good if not better than sam adams cherry wheat.

I guess my question is would just adding the cherries to the secondary be enough to do this? Or should I have maybe made some modifications to the boil?

Thanks for any help!

I made a ten gallon batch of a chocolate cherry porter. When going to secondary, i split it in half and put one can of pregon cherry puree in one and two in the other half ( 3#s of cherry and 6#s of cherry). To over simplify everything, i was not happy with the results. The 3 lbs gave no flavor, the 6 lbs gave some, but the flavor didnt taste like cherry at all...i wasnt overlly impressed...i'll be going with fresh fruit going forward.

Yeah the few people I have gotten info from say fresh fruit is better than or just as good as the puree and is also cheaper.

Make sure you boil the fruit for 2 mins. I have added fresh ingredients such as raspberries and I ended up with an infection.

tjt_88 said:

Make sure you boil the fruit for 2 mins. I have added fresh ingredients such as raspberries and I ended up with an infection.

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oh really? I have heard freezing sanitizes them but havent heard to boil them.

I froze the peppers I put in and I still got one so I just boil them now.

35se said:

oh really? I have heard freezing sanitizes them but havent heard to boil them.

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Freezing only makes bacteria and yeast go dormant, doesn't actually kill it.

Hmm. Ok cool well im glad I found that out. lol

Thanks for the info!

Has anyone tried just using 100% fruit juice? I have a few bottles of 100% Sweet black cherry that I'm thinking about using.

I'm sure that would work. I have a buddy that puts yeast in fruit juice and makes beer out of that.

There is a thread somewhere about using fruit juice instead of priming sugar, that could work as well.

Another question on adding fruit.

Has anyone messed around with the timing of adding the fruit?

Like ive been reading around and i see some people add the fruit to the primary instead of the secondary. My wheat has been in the primary for about 9 days so im wondering if I may have missed my timing for that?

No u can add it when u want to. The later u add it the more up front flavor ur going to have. I added mine bout the same time ur at right now. But if u want that yeast I would add it to the secondary. And put an air lock on it.

So umm. Added cherries mashed up to secondary and Mis calced like crazy. first off siphoned to much and some came out the top.

Thankfully I have blowoff on standby because it went crazy. I had beer sitting 8 inches up the blowoff tube for like a day or two.

Kinda worried about how it is going to turn out tbh. Live and learn i guess.

The cherries u added had that much sugar in them. How much did u add?

5 lbs

That's a little much. My raspberry I put 7 pints about two lbs and it was perfect for what I was looking for.

I have read that 5lbs is about average.