Dried Sour Cherry Question

I have a 4 month old flanders red going, and down the road I'd like to add some sour cherries to it. I have never seen sour cherries anywhere in southern california, even in season, so I think my best option would be to use the dried version. However pretty much every dried version I've researched uses sunflower oil to prevent clumping, I don't want to spend over a year making a batch of beer only to ruin it by adding oil and killing head retention and mouthfeel.

Anyways the rough plan would be to take 1.5 to 2# of the cherries, rehydrate on the stove in pinot noir, puree the mixture and rack the beer on top of it. Anyone have any experience with dried cherries or have reason to believe this wont work? Thanks in advance I've learned a ton from these boards

I have used Oregon tart pie cherries packed in water. This is not the same thing as cherry pie filling, which is loaded with sugar and goo. I can find these at some grocery stores, but not all. Here is a link to help you know what to look for:

http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&index=blended&field-keywords=oregon canned cheeries&tag=fstchrm-20

You should be able to find those Oregon canned cherries in homebrew shops or online if your grocery stores don't carry them. They seem to be pretty expensive, so you may want to look into other alternatives online, such as frozen tart cherries or real cherry juice.

Im in the same boat as you, down in the SW we just dont see those type of cherries so I had always used a combo of sour cherry juice (from knudsens) and sweet black cherries and it seemed to turn out pretty good

I did this when the majority though that the sour cherries were best on their own, but not it seems that more and more people are starting to think a combo of sweet/sour cherries is the best way to replicate the schaarbeek cherries from belgium

Thanks for the help guys, I like the idea of using the tart cherries packed in water in combination with some fresh local cherries. The local cherries will give me at least a portion that I know are super fresh, right around cherry season the beer will probably be ready for some fruit.