Black cherry stout, your $0.02 please...

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opreska

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Please give me your 2 cents.....
I just made a dry stout (similar to Guiness). I got the kit from AHS.
Anyway, I'm making this beer for my sister's wedding, and she requested that she wanted a fruity type beer. I suggested a Black cherry stout, she's all for it. Soo, I have the wort fermenting with the yeast, as I type. I just purchased a can of black cherry juice from one of those specialty super markets. On the side of the bottle it says 100% juice. The ingredients say, 100% black cherry juice - no preservatives. The lid says pasturised for your saftey, so I'm assuming I can just pour the juice directly in with the fermenting wort, no boiling, right?
Well, the bottle is 32 oz. I was wondering if anybody had any suggestions on how much I should pour in? The whole bottle, maybe half?
I know stouts already have a strong flavor and I want to have a pretty strong flavor of black cherries, but I don't want it to be over kill on the beer flavor.
Since I'm pretty new to this home brewing, I was wondering if any one could shed some light on techniques I could use? Has anyone tried using pure juice from a bottle that's already been pasturised? Oh, and one more thing, I was thinking about adding some unsweetened coco as well, thought I might make it a Chocolate black cherry stout. Is unsweetened coco the way to go, since beer has so much sugar in it already?
 
I'd skip the chocolate personally. Stout malts already have a lot of the characteristics of unsweetened chocolate and I think it'll be lost. It's generally better to keep beers simple...something newer brewers inevitably have trouble accepting ;)

I'd use all that cherry juice at least. Why not? It'll ferment and won't be too sweet and to notice the cherry in a stout, you'll need a lot. Cheers :D
 
Hey,
Thanks for the advice.
Yes, I do agree about the stouts already having chocolate characteristics. That brings up another question, I saw white chocolate powder as well as the regular chocolate coca. Have you ever, or heard of anyone ever using white chocolate powder instead? I thought it might be interesting for a future batch.....White chocolate stout?? White almond chocolate stout??
 
My advice: Definitely don't use white chocolate. It's not even cocoa. White chocolate is made of cocoa butter and sugar. If you use chocolate at all, I'd get a high quality dark, unsweetened chocolate powder like Scharffenberger or Ghiradeli.

People who know chocolate don't even really consider white chocolate a chocolate. It's a sweet, but it's basically sugar and fatty oils. None of the stuff that makes chocolate so groovy. Real chocolate is a drug :D

Mmmm...chocolate...
 
Nice, thanks for the info Janx.

Since your on a roll here.
I was also thinking about making a Hazelnut stout this weekend. I'm going to use the same dry stout recipe, but add in some Hazelnut syrup.
The stuff I got was from the same specialty super market. The label says certified organic. Does that mean I have to boil the syrup at 180 degrees for 20 minutes to make it all natural? Then cool to 80 and add to the wort?

Also, the ingredients on the back say:

Organic Evaporated Cane juice,
Purified Water,
Organic Hazelnut Flavor,
Vegetable Glycerine,
Citric Acid

Would any of these ingredients be harmful to my precious beer.

Also, the serving size says 1 Tbsp. 16- Servings per bottle.
Should I just add the whole bottle?
 
That's kind of my concern. I tried using extract on a batch a couple of months ago. I added it at bottling time, however, no flavor, zero zilch nada nothing....
I just thought I might try a different approach. Do you still think the syrup would be a bad idea? Would it make the beer undrinkable?
 
Syrup is primarily...syrup. It's going to result in another small fermentation that may or may not result in the flavor you're trying to achieve (depending on how much you add). Plus, I'm not really sure how those other ingredients may affect the beer, perhaps not at all.

Extract should definitely do the trick. You may need to add more. If it's good enough Rogue, it should work for us, too!:
http://www.rogue.com/brews.html#hazelnut
 
Yeah,
I just tried some of that a few days ago. It rocked:rockin:
That was my inspiration, however I wanted to do it with a stout.
Thanks for the link.
 
As far as the black cherry juice goes, use it all.

Pastor Dave of The Church of Chocolate says:

Skip the chocolate, just doesn't work. Use chocolate malt.

"white chocolate" is BLASPHEMY and a stench in the eyes of the goddess!
 
the other ingredients like citric acid and glycerine in the syrup will affect your pH for sure, but I'm not sure how thats gonna effect the flavor. The first rule when trying to change something on abeer (i.e. amount of hazelnut flavor) is to change only one thing, that way you can really notice the difference. that one thing should be the amount of extract IMO. Hazelnut syrup is extract made into syrup form, so your using the same thing but alot more sugar. stick with the extract i think.

Ditto on the white chocolate. Ditto on the chocolate malt. if you want chocoalte flavor throw a lb. of chocolate malt in and it'll get the job done.
 
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