Cherry amber ale

[NICK_M]

So I'm feeling adventurous and I'm making my own simple cherry amber ale recipe.
Here is the recipe:
7 lbs of amber malt extract (syrup)
1 lb 60L crystal malts (crushed)
5 oz of clear candi sugar (to bring abv up a little)
1.5 oz Chinook hops (20 min.)
0.5 oz Chinook hops (5 min.)
Wyeast American Ale 1056

Then I plan on adding 23 oz. of cherry pie filling (w/o corn syrup) to my secondary.
Any suggestions or modifications I can do? Also I'm wondering if I should add the cherry filling to my primary or my secondary.

 

[PT Ray]

Your hop additions need some attention. Generally fruit and spiced beers don't have late additions. If the Chinook is somewhere around 12% AA .5-.7 ounces at 60 minutes should be all you need.

I'm not so sure about the amber extract but that may be more of a personal thing. To me cherry beers have two categories, something light like a wheat or bitter roasted sweet like a stout.

 

[usfmikeb]

I've always made cherry beers by using frozen cherries, rather than canned pie cherries, which will have all kinds of chemicals in the can. With that said, if that's the route you're going to take, put them in the secondary, in case there's a chemical in the can that will kill yeast. This way, you'll still get the primary fermentation done, and if you can't get a secondary fermentation kicked up due to a chemical issue, you'll just have a sweet amber from the sugars with the canned cherries.

Just my $0.02.

 

[RandomBeerGuy]

When I did a cherry wheat ale that got a second place in a comp. I used one can of cherry pie filling and placed the cherries near the end boil due to the syrup. I blended up the filling to make little crushed cherries. I also just when to my LHBS and picked up a little container of cherry extract and added that to the bottling bucket. It was a huge hit. I would like to see how your cherry amber turns out.

 

[usfmikeb]

I know a lot of people like to use the extracts, but I never use them. I figure that if I'm going to take the time to handcraft a homebrew, I'm not going to take shortcuts.

 

[RandomBeerGuy]

I totally agree, I then would go with fresh crushed cherries in secondary and let it sit awhile.

 

[usfmikeb]

I suggest freezing them, simply because it breaks the cellular walls within the fruit. I always try to use fresh fruit, and freeze it the day before I'm going to use it. For example, I've got a cherry dubbel that I need to bottle, in which we actually picked the fresh cherries and froze them before adding to secondary. I let them sit for ten weeks before racking to a tertiary.

 

[NICK_M]

Thanks for the input! I decided against the extract (since mice got into my brewing cabinet and the extract was all over the place) but I am going to use the pie filling because the clerk at my LHBS told me he's used it many times before. But I might get some frozen tart cherries to add to the secondary to kick up a tarty flavor. Any recommendations on some other types of hops? (I think the mice got to those too which is odd...)