I will soon be up to my knees in cherries...

Here in Michigan we will be swimming in cherries in the next month or so and I want to do a cherry wheat beer. I want to do the MWS cherry wheat kit but with fresh cherries and could use some advice on amounts, technique, etc. Here is the base recipe:

6lbs wheat lme
.5lbs carapils
1oz hersbrucker pellets
1oz tettnang pellets
wl300 hefewiezen yeast

xlbs fresh ripe cherries

Anyway I was thinking of freezing the cherries then thawing and adding to secondary. Do I need to pasteurize them or do anything to ensure sanitation? I am still undecided how much cherry flavor I want in the finished product. I'd love to hear your experiences with this type of beer. Thanks!

 

dude, get some canning jars. Fill it with cherries, then like 3/4 with some vodka or something and the rest with simple syrup. Let it marinade dark and cool for like 2 months and eat the cherries and drink the liquor.

 

I'm still waiting on my first fruit beer to clear, but I had to research this when I was prepping for it. Some people wash fruit, crush it, and toss it in, since in the secondary there's going to be a lot of alcohol and competition from yeast to discourage other bugs: others like me finds that makes them nervous. I gather you get the best flavor extraction + sanitation from berries by freezing them to break cell walls, then pasteurizing at 160F(do not boil) for 10 minutes. I've also heard of washing the whole fruit in sanitizer, draining, and pureeing, or also mixing it with crushed campden tablets to kill wild yeast and bacteria. So, take your pick.

If the fruit's been heated and especially boiled, pectic enzyme will prevent haze in the finished beer, though some fruits have much more pectin than others. I don't know where cherries are on the scale.