Fruit flavors that don't taste fake

I am gearing up to make a chocolate cherry oatmeal stout, and need some help. I have tasted many variations of this style of beer, and invariably the cherry flavor tastes fake. Is there any product out there that will add the cherry flavor without the syrupy or chemical taste?

TIA

Cherries?

Why not use cherries?

gah... brain, gear --> not in.

I meant to ask if straight cherries in secondary would be the best option. Should I then not worry about it until the secondary and not do anything in the boil/fermentor?

It would probably take a lot of cherries in secondary to give you the flavor you want in a stout. But the good thing is that the color won't be changed (I don't like the look of light ales sitting on darker fruits - it turns pinkish/purplish).

You could try the Cherry fruit puree. Looks like it's only $11.50 for 3lbs at Northern Brewer. The bonus is that it's also pasteurized or sterilized (dunno which), so you can toss it in without fear of wild yeast.

As far as extracts, you are at the mercy of the quality of the extract. I've brewed two blueberry beers - one with a $3.99 artificial LHBS crap and it tasted like cough syrup. I tried a $6.99 blueberry natural & artificial from NB and it was MUCH better.

I haven't brewed with fruit before, so take this with a grain of salt, but I've heard pro brewers recommend 1-2 lbs of fruit per gallon at the end of secondary. With a stout I'd personally shoot closer to 2 lbs.

You can toss the cherries in whole, freeze them (to burst the cell walls and make the sugar more accessible) or puree them. I'd be hesitant to pasteurize them because you'll lose some of the delicate flavors and aromas. Just wash them as you would normally and go from there.

Good luck and let us know how it turns out! I've toyed around with the idea of a raspberry stout but haven't tackled it yet, so feedback on how this turns out would be great.

snowveil said:

I haven't brewed with fruit before, so take this with a grain of salt, but I've heard pro brewers recommend 1-2 lbs of fruit per gallon at the end of secondary. With a stout I'd personally shoot closer to 2 lbs.

You can toss the cherries in whole, freeze them (to burst the cell walls and make the sugar more accessible) or puree them. I'd be hesitant to pasteurize them because you'll lose some of the delicate flavors and aromas. Just wash them as you would normally and go from there.

Good luck and let us know how it turns out! I've toyed around with the idea of a raspberry stout but haven't tackled it yet, so feedback on how this turns out would be great.

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Wow, 10lbs of fruit, that's a big secondary.

I might try playing with a lighter beer and some fruit to nail down the idea. Will report back later.

i would go with 2 pounds of fruit in the secondary ...3 max

I do a few fruit beers. With stronger flavors like raspberry in a light ale, I use about 4lbs. It comes out very raspberry. Since cherries are a bit more subtle, you will need to up that some. Since its a stout, up it some more, depending on how strong of a flavor you are going for. I would vote for ~6lbs in the secondary for one month and see how it works. You can always rack it on to more if you want more flavor. I always use the frozen kind and I hit it with a blender after its thawed to get more surface area for the flavor to come out.

Try googling for Jamil's black forest stout for some guidance. I think there's even a podcast on the Brewing Network about it. Award wining recipe for a chocolate, cherry stout.

I'd add sour cherries to secondary, about pound per gallon. I've heard the purées don't give good results (syrupy sweet or cough syrup). Good luck.

The purees are super fantastically great. I suggest one can for most beers, and one and a half to two for strong porters, stouts, and other beers with a lot of roast and caramel flavors.

Extracts and artificial flavorings suck. Stay away from those.

Thanks for the great (and sometimes conflicting) advice!

I used 1 can of the blueberry (~48oz) in a wit I made and it was really under flavored. I am going to try 5lb next time.

I use real fruit that I clean and cut into appropriately sized pieces. The process I have developed over several batches of fruit beer is as follows:

1. I will buy the fruit fresh, and then immediately wash it and cut it into smaller pieces so that it is easier to handle for later stages, and also because I want to expose some of the cells of the fruit to the beer. At this time I will also discard any fruit that looks overripe or has exposed surfaces where some kind of infection is likely to have occurred. For stuff like blueberries, blackberries, etc. I will "distress" the fruit instead of cutting it by smacking it a few times against a sanitized surface.

2. I then put the fruit into a sanitized tupperware container in the freezer for a day or two; basically some amount of time on the order of a few days before I plan to rack my beer to secondary.

3. I take the fruit out of the freezer, open up the sanitized container, stick the block o' fruit into a sanitized nylon mesh bag, seal up the top of the bag so the fruit pieces can't get out, and then put that into my secondary fermenter and rack on top of it.

4. Wait some amount of time for the fruit flavors to get into the beer. For some beers this can be something like one or two weeks, and for others it can be more like a month to six weeks. With strawberries, for example, I don't feel like the flavor is imparted very easily into the beer, so I rack it for longer.

5. When I am ready to package, it is then very easy to pull out the fruit bag and clean out the bag and fermenter.