Cherry Wheat ????

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schilkedog

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I have a Brewer's Best weizenbier kit in my primary. It will be ready for secondary in a day or two. I want to make a cherry wheat. I have a 6 gallon glass carboy and a gallon of organic tart cherry juice. Here are the questions:

1. Will this work?
2. Do I need to make any changes to priming sugar at bottling?
3. How long in the secondary?
4. Is there anything else I need to know?

Any info is greatly appreciated.
 
Are you planning to add the juice to the secondary, or at bottling time? A gallon of juice seems like an awful lot. Lots of people add a couple of pounds of cherries or puree to the secondary and rack on top of that, or else use a small amount of cherry extract at bottling time. I would think adding a whole gallon of juice would be overpowering.
 
I tend to use one pound of frozen fruit per gallon of beer. A whole gallon of juice is going to be WAY too much; 2-3 cups is the most you'd want to use in a 5 gal batch unless you want it to taste like a beer cocktail.

If you add juice, it's going to ferment the sugars - so make sure to give it some time. If you don't, you'll create bottle bombs
 
this is something i've been meaning to ask...i'm making a MH #9 clone, when do I add the extract? Secondary? Bottling bucket?
 
hardrain said:
this is something i've been meaning to ask...i'm making a MH #9 clone, when do I add the extract? Secondary? Bottling bucket?
Click to expand...

Fruit extract? If so, add it to the secondary
 
I plan to add to the secondary. But if adding at bottling would be better I'll do that
 
I would not add at botltling. Your juice has sugars that will ferment. If you want to add something at bottling time, get some extract from the LHBS & use half the recomended amount and taste test before adding more. If you want to use your fruit juice it will probably take at least two weeks (maybe four) to ferment out all the sugars.
 
remember to that once the sugars have fermented out you lose some of the sweetness of the juice. If your going for a hint of the same flavor profile as the juice you may want to go extract. you can get the full impact of the flavor without the worry of the additional ferment changing the taste.
 
add it to your secondary I haven't used juice per say but I have made a few batches of cherry wheat where I have racked onto 4-5# of cherries in the secondary.

fresh cherries crushed then frozen, thawed then fermented :drunk:
 
If you add extract when you bottle you can tweak the amount until it tastes right to you, but it will need time to bottle condition (3 to 4 weeks) or you'll end up with beer that taste like it was flavored with cherry cough syrup.:drunk:
 

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