Adding Cherries to Stout - How much?

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JungMin

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Most posts here definitely recommend adding fruit once racked to the secondary, but I'm not sure how much to add. I have a can of cherries in syrup, but how much to add to the secondary?? The whole can (not a small can, the bigger ones. like a can of tomatoes)??

Thanks
 
#1 I would not recommend adding the cherries in a can of syrup. That syrup is not cherry syrup, and I would not want it in my beer.

#2 Tomatos come in a range of sizes.

#3 How much cherry taste do you want? Do you want a barely noticeable taste, a subtle taste, an even taste, a stronger taste or a BAM it's Framboise taste?
 
if you have a health food store nearby look for a product called cherry concentrate, it's from michigan tart cherries with nothing added, and use the amount reccomended for reconstitution. this has some sugars but more of the flavor profile will stay in the finish product
 
I added 5 lbs of fresh sweet cherries to my stout and can barely taste it. I have also tried the cherry extract. I will not do that again!
 
Yeah I would to get a cherry puree to use and not let that syrup into the brew. I did a apricot blackberry and used about 5-6 pounds of fruit. It turned out ok but was a little tart.
 
Cherries are hard to use in beer. The fruit flavor that you notice the most in beers, usually comes from more tart/acidic fruits, not overly sweet ones. A trick that I have heard, but have not actually used, is to add a bit of lactic acid to fruit beers that use sweet fruits like cherry or strawberry, and that will actually accentuate the fruit flavors in the beer. Also, you would probably not want very sweet cherries, try a more sour variety.

Taste for flavor before bottling and if it doesn't have enough fruity flavor, maybe try a bit o' lactic acid.

On the fruit beer I made, the flavor was there, but it didn't really come across as fruity because it was so dry and actually a little too tart like the post above. Some lactose at bottling helped out a lot there, adding back a lot of sweetness that made it seem fruitier. In general, a nice balance between tart and sweet makes it taste the fruitiest.
 
BarleyWater that makes sense. Would a 50/50 split of sour and sweet cherries work?

That's what I'm planning on doing for my spiced cherry dubbel.
The recipe is from Randy Mosher's book Radical brewing.

I think I'm going to order frozen tart cherries from Michigan as I missed this years harvest.

Here's a link to one of the places I might order from.
You can get either canned packed in water or frozen.
http://www.mi-cherries.com/can.htm
 
I used 4 lbs of dark cherries in a stout, and they give a nice subtle flavor. I hate fruit beers that are overly fruity.
 
Well, I may have to pass on the cherries. I brew in S. Korea where homebrewing supplies are limited.

I thought I had seen canned cherries in water for a decent price, but it turns out they are close to $7 for a 400g can. There were fresh cherries in the supermarket, but the were extremely expensive!! $13 for a tiny plastic bin, must have bin around 500 grams.

That's getting a bit pricey. It costs me around $60 just to brew a batch of beer (extract brewing). I have recently knocked that down to around $50 by collecting the yeast from the fermenter.

Thanks for all the posts.
 
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