Brooklyn Brew Shop's Cherry Hill Wheat (w/chokecherry substitute) - Tips and Advice

Along with Bruxelles Blonde, another one of my upcoming brews from Brooklyn Brew Shop is Cherry Hill Wheat:

http://brooklynbrewshop.com/beer-making-mixes/cherry-hill-wheat-mix

For reference, here are the brewing instructions for this 1-gallon, all-grain mix:

http://brooklynbrewshop.com/directions/Brooklyn_Brew_Shop_Cherry_Hill_Wheat_Instructions.pdf

My original plan had been to make this with Flathead Cherries grown here in Montana, but unfortunately the crop that we got this year wasn't the best, so none of those cherries ever made it to me.

I was just about to go to the store and simply pick up a bag of cherries to use; however, while picking chokecherries with my son for syrup and wine, it occurred to me that these might work well with a wheat beer. Beyond that, the marriage of chokecherry and a wheat beer would very nicely reflect my North Dakotan and Montanan heritage.



With that, I decided to give it a try.

Those of you know have experience with chokecherries know that the extracted juice makes wonderful syrup with a unique flavor, quite different from the astringent quality that chokecherries have when eaten "straight off the tree." Taking that into account, I think that this is an experiment worth trying, but I had a couple of questions:

The instructions (referenced above) advise adding 1 cup of pitted "regular" cherries and adding them with 5 minutes left in the boil; however, those with experience know that pitting chokecherries is kind of like herding cats - it just can't really be done. With that in mind, I'm thinking I should probably add a few extra (to make up for the large pits) and boil them a bit longer (to make up for the time needed to extract the juice and flavor).

Currently, I am thinking to double the amount of chokecherries (to two cups), and adding them in with 30 minutes left in the boil, since when I am making syrup, I boil them for 30 minutes anyway. I am also planning to gently mash the chokecherries as I would normally when rendering them for syrup.

Before I do this, however, Id like to solicit opinions and advice from anyone with experience working with chokecherries, in the hops that you could share your experience or ideas. Do my proposed alterations make sense, or should I simply add 1 cup of chokecherries with 5 minutes left in the boil?

Please advise, and thanks in advance -

Ron

Another note: This mix from BBS uses Fuggle hops, so any bitterness from the chokecherries (there really isn't much anyway) should not over-power the over-all brew.

Another option that I just thought of: put the chokecherries in a little bit of water in a small sauce pan, then heat them for a few minutes so that they swell and burst (or can be gently mashed) before adding to the boil, which in this case would be done at the 5 minute mark stated in the instructions.

This might the best option of all, and it is close to the pre-brew instructions that I see in their Blackberry Red Ale:

http://brooklynbrewshop.com/directions/Brooklyn_Brew_Shop_Blackberry_Red_Ale_Instructions.pdf

In that case, the instructions say to add a 1/4 cup of sugar as well, but I am guessing that wouldn't apply in the case of what I am trying to do here with the Cherry/Chokecherry wheat, since it wasn't mentioned in the original instructions.

I am probably over-thinking all of this, so what I will probably end up doing is exactly what I am considering in this post (pre-heat with a little water), without adding sugar. Based on that, I will disregard the options that I proposed in my opening post in favour of this plan, unless someone suggests otherwise.

If anyone has any other ideas or thoughts, please feel free to share them.

More as it happens, etc. & c....

Ron

With luck, I'll be brewing this weekend, so I am bumping this in case anyone might have any thoughts on the issues outlined above.

If not, I'll forge ahead and see how it goes!

I would be inclined to add the chokecherries *after* the boil, while the wort is still around 170 degrees. You'll get a lot less pectin haze and preserve more of the flavor, in my opinion. I have normally only added fruit after primary fermentation has subsided, but that does have some infection risk, and it might not work well if you're adding pits and all. If you want to make a syrup and add that, doing it late in fermentation might be a good option as well.

Hi, ong, and thanks for the suggestion. I thought about it but it's so far from the instructions that I was concerned about giving it a try at this early stage in my brewing career. I'm already in uncharted territory here, so am trying to "colour inside the lines" as much as possible until I can evaluate how each departure from the instructions will affect the outcome.

In the case of the chokecherries, I was also concerned that adding them after the boil - then straining them out - would give no opportunity for the flavour to get into the beer. The more I think about it the more it seems that there really isn't much of an opportunity to get anything out of them, except by steeping and gently mashing them for a while first. I have some experience with this, as I make chokecherry syrup, and have learned how to keep pectin haze to a minimum by skimming off the "stuff" that comes to the surface as the chokecherries heat up, so I'll try that and see how it goes.

With that, I'll heat them on the stove just enough to start releasing their treasures, then add with 5 minutes left in the boil as per the regular instructions. The only remaining question was whether I'd need to add a little sugar or not, but since this is not in the original instructions, and doing so before fermentation would add no sweetness to the profile, I will refrain from adding any sugar.

We'll see if I made the right decision - if not, I can always try again!

Correction: It looks like instructions advise adding cherries at 58 minutes into the boil, so I will add the chokecherries at that time, rather than with 5 minutes left.

Alright, I have just begun the boil with this brew. Here are some notes -

The brew went largely without incident, following the instructions as outlined in the opening post. As far as the chokecherries are concerned, I took them out of the freezer (a generous cup of whole chokecherries in a small ZipLock-type bag), put them in a small saucepan with half a cup of the same water I was using for brewing, and set them on the stove at low heat. Once the chokecherries were thawed and the water had heated a bit, they started to swell almost to the point of bursting. At this point, I shut off the heat and gently worked them over with a hand-held potato masher for a few minutes, then set them aside. Periodically throughout the brew, as I was able to, I took a few minutes to continue to mash the chokecherries - always as gently as possible, so as not to crust the pits.

Fast forward to the hot break during the boil: I added 1/2 of my Fuggle hops and set my timer. At 30 minutes, I will add half the remaining hops, then the rest of the hops at 10 minutes remaining. When there are two minutes remaining, I will add the "chokecherry mash" and proceed as I normally would from that point.

I caught a tiny sample of my "chokecherry mash" liquid as I was working them with the potato masher; the taste was wonderful: sweet, just a bit tart, with that beautiful chokecherry richness that has people collecting them by the bucketful at the end of summer. In combination with the wheat beer, I think this is going to be a great Montana-themed ale that will really be something special.

More as it happens, etc. &c....

I looked in on my beer this morning and fermentation seems to be going quite well; fermentation activity is a bit slow, but it is definitely happening. I'll let it go for the next couple of days. At that time, I will replace the blow-off tube with an airlock.

More as it happens, etc. &c....

I checked on it again this morning and fermentation seems to have settled down a little, as expected.

Tonight or possibly tomorrow, I will swap the blow-off tube with an airlock, and then leave it alone for about three weeks.

I forgot to mention, when I switched from blow-off tube to airlock, the beer looked really good. Plenty of evidence of very good fermentation, and the beer was starting to clear very nicely. There was quite a bit of very fine trub building up, but my experience is telling me that this is the norm for wheat beers. I think we are well on track for some wonderful stuff here.

I will, of course, keep updating as events unfold.

Here's the label that I came up with for this beer:

I bottled this beer on Saturday, 28 November; about 3 weeks after I had planned to bottle it, but life gets that way - especially during hunting season! No big deal - in fact, my better beers have been the ones that were bottled "late."

The process really went off without a hitch, and I ended up with nearly 10 bottles, which is a "perfect yield" for a 1-gallon batch that doesn't happen very often. One HUGE help was that, for the first time, I used a spring-loaded tip on the end of the bottling rig, which kept me from flinging beer all over the place, as is often the case with the thumb-driven clamps. I am 100% convinced that the spring-loaded tip and the mini auto-siphon are the two absolute best investments I have made in my brewing experience. I managed to suck up a little bit of trub, but I am not concerned about this. My experience is that it settles with the bottle-conditioning sediment and poses no trouble at all, especially when the beer starts out as amazingly clear as this one did before I began bottling.

With the un-carbonated, un-finished beer that I had leftover from bottling, I was able to sample what promises to be an excellent and outstanding brew. So far, it is shaping up to be a nice, dark-ish ale with good wheat character and a wonderful, subtle hint of the chokecherries that I added in place of "regular" cherries. The Fuggle Hops impart a nice, outdoorsy, very seasonal ambience that truly make them my favourite hops, especially this time of year. The local honey that I used as a priming sugar also comes into play, giving the beer a rich, mellow, addicting undertone that I simply can't imagine with corn or table sugar. All-in-all, very good, I think, and I am really thinking of this as a quintessential "Montana" beer.

My bottles are hanging out now in the closet, and will continue to do so until at least three weeks have passed. I'll then refrigerate the finished beer for a week before sampling it, and my patience will hopefully be rewarded.

Yeah, I'm gonna need a bottle to verify any of these posts are credible...

-BD

I "guess" that can be arranged, BrunDog?

TasunkaWitko said:

...those with experience know that pitting chokecherries is kind of like herding cats - it just can't really be done. With that in mind, I'm thinking I should probably add a few extra (to make up for the large pits) and boil them a bit longer...

Click to expand...

I hate to rain on your Cherry Festival, but I wonder if this might be why the BBS recipe suggests you pit the fruit prior to using it in something made for human consumption ---

From the United States Dept. of Agriculture website re: chokecherries:

"The seeds (pits) are toxic due to production of hydrocyanic acid... . Cases of illness and deaths have been traced back to eating the seeds of these trees."

Would tossing the cherries into the last few minutes of the boil possibly have the effect of extracting some of the toxins? Don't know, just asking.

The solution is rather simple GHBWNY - don't eat the pits!

With the nature of the chokecherry (small, dense, large pit), there is no pitting them. They are not like a regular cherry, which has a relatively small pit surrounded by a lot of pulp.

The chokecherry can be used with confidence - My grandparents did it, their parents did it, and my grandchildren will do it. Thousands - possibly millions - of people make a variety of food products every year from chokecherries, and they do it by simmering the un-pitted fruit just as I described above, for at least half an hour, in many cases. In all cases, the chokecherries are gently (without crushing the hard pits) agitated and pressed in some way (with the back of a wooden spoon against the side of the pot, with a hand-held potato masher, with a pestle etc.) and the result is beautiful, wonderful chokecherry juice, which is then sweetened and preserved as syrup or made into jelly, jam, wine etc. Hutterite colonies all over the region offer it at farmers' markets, and Lewistown, Montana has a Chokecherry Festival every September, complete with a pit-spitting contest (which my son won last year).

Not a single death - that I am aware of - has resulted from consuming these chokecherry products.

So, no rain on the parade, thank goodness, because this is looking to be a pretty good beer.

TasunkaWitko said:

The solution is rather simple GHBWNY - don't eat the pits!

With the nature of the chokecherry (small, dense, large pit), there is no pitting them. They are not like a regular cherry, which has a relatively small pit surrounded by a lot of pulp.

The chokecherry can be used with confidence - My grandparents did it, their parents did it, and my grandchildren will do it. Thousands - possibly millions - of people make a variety of food products every year from chokecherries, and they do it by simmering the un-pitted fruit just as I described above, for at least half an hour, in many cases. In all cases, the chokecherries are gently (without crushing the hard pits) agitated and pressed in some way (with the back of a wooden spoon against the side of the pot, with a hand-held potato masher, with a pestle etc.) and the result is beautiful, wonderful chokecherry juice, which is then sweetened and preserved as syrup or made into jelly, jam, wine etc. Hutterite colonies all over the region offer it at farmers' markets, and Lewistown, Montana has a Chokecherry Festival every September, complete with a pit-spitting contest (which my son won last year).

Not a single death - that I am aware of - has resulted from consuming these chokecherry products.

So, no rain on the parade, thank goodness, because this is looking to be a pretty good beer.

Click to expand...

Understood. Just thought maybe that a little "help" to "defend" you from possible toxicity issues might eliminate the need to "heal" from them. Enjoy that brew!

I was finally able to sample this beer after a little over a month in the bottle. Results were very good in my opinion, but I also think that there is some room for improvement.

The main thing was that it was over-carbed; it took about half an hour of very careful attention to open the bottle without it being a geyser. Not a big deal, but worth noting so that I can keep it from happening again next time. The colour was very interesting and not unexpected; a dark pink edging almost toward purple. If you look up at the image of the label above, it actually was very much like the dark pink in the background between the yellow in the middle and the purple on the outside edges of the picture. Interesting, indeed.

It smelled like a good wheat beer, and I liked it. It seemed that the chokecherry came through in a subtle way, but that could have been wishful thinking on my part - or the hops. Same with the taste: like a good wheat beer, with a suggestion or an essence of the chokecherry that I added. It was more subtle than I intended, but for a first attempt I am not displeased. It was a bit more bitter than expected, with the Fuggle hops, but not in a terrible way.

I'll try it again in about a month and see how it turns out. In the past, I've had beers "slide in" to their expected flavor profile after some time in the refrigerator; I've also found that the passage of time can help tone down the over-carbonation a bit, as well. I'd like to take my time with this one in order to see if it improves, and how much. As for getting more chokecherry into the flavour, my first step will probably be to double the chokecherries and add them a little earlier in the boil - perhaps at 10 or 5 minutes, rather than 2. I might also consider adding some chokecherries to the primary fermentation.

In all, it was definitely a good beer, but it could also definitely be a little better. We'll see what we can do.

I'm posting this here for my own future reference:

http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator/carbonation.html

It might be something worth looking at on future brews in fine-tuning the addition of honey/maple syrup/whatever for bottling....

I wanted to provide a quick update on this: it is amazing what will happen with the passage of time!

Before, this beer was simply "good." It was adequate and I could drink it with no regrets at all, but it wasn't quite as tasty as I had hoped it to be. The colour was very nice, with its hints of burgundy courtesy of the chokecherry, but the actual flavour of this beloved Montana fruit had been very elusive and subtle, almost to the point where it really had no purpose in the beer. The wonderful characteristics of the Fuggle hops were also very muted, as well.

I hadn't had the opportunity to sample this beer for several weeks - but it has been sitting in the refrigerator, waiting for me to discover the things that can be achieved, given a little time.

Last night, I cracked one open and sampled it. I noticed on my previous tastings that it was slightly over-carbonated, so I tried putting it in the freezer for a while before opening - maybe 20 minutes or so. This seemed to be a good decision, as when I opened the beer, there was no gushing, foaming or any other violent reaction in the bottle.

The beer poured very well and showed its beautiful colour to advantage - but what truly surprised me was how the hops and the chokecherry seemed to come out into their own, giving this beer an entirely new flavour that I found most delicious, especially compared to my ambivalent first impressions. Indeed, the combination of the hops and chokecherry had emerged to the point where they immediately took me back to the foggy, early-autumn morning when my son and I gathered these very same chokecherries, with the smell of wet leaves in the air and the sweetness of the juice peeking from behind the initial slight astringency of the ripe berries. In the case of the beer, there was no astringency, just as there is none when one makes chokecherry syrup or jelly, and I could really see this beer having potential.

Due to this late development, I am going to upgrade this experiment from "okay" to "success!" - with the caveat that one has to be patient and allow the beer time in the bottle to mature. If anyone is interested in the prospect of giving this chokecherry-wheat beer a try, It looks as though the combination of wheat, Fuggle hops and chokecherries is a good one - you simply need to wait a little longer in order to enjoy it.

Nice to see a fellow Montanan on here! I would love to try this once I get my new system set up. I'm relatively new to home brewing and am doing 5 gallon batches. I found a recipe from BYO, https://byo.com/stories/issue/item/3089-chokecherry-stout, and am wondering how that compares to what you did. Do you have your own recipe for the beer?

Thanks in advance!

Scott

Hi, Scott - and I agree: great to see a fellow Montanan!

To be honest, I am not 100% sure about the specific recipe of the beer, as it is a discontinued grain mix from www.brooklynbrewshop.com. Since I live in Chinook, and it is pretty rare to get to Billings or Helena to visit an LHBS, I've found Brooklyn Brew Shop to be a very nice alternative, with a never-ending supply of great mixes, as well as a constant (and rotating) inventory of new and unique ones to try. Best of all, all of their mixes are a great blank canvas - any of them will lend itself very well to experimentation, so the possibilities are endless. In the past, they've done only 1-gallon mixes, but lately, they have been branching out into some 5-gallon mixes. These are all-grain, and in my opinion they are of great quality. Until I can visit an LFHB and shop there, buying the pre-mixed grains from BBS is a great way to go, and the customer service cannot be beat.

What I do know about the recipe is that it is for a wheat beer, using Fuggle hops. Originally, the intent was for the mix (named "Cherry Hill Wheat") to incorporate "regular" cherries, but being a Montanan, I figured that chokecherries would put a nice western spin on it, especially with the wheat. I believe that the Cherry Hill Wheat mix is a spin-off of BBS's "Summer Wheat" mix (with Fuggle hops instead of Styrian Golding, and the addition of cherries), and I do have that recipe at home. When I get home tonight, I will take a look and see what I can figure out, then will let you know.

If I forget, please do feel free to remind me. With kids, work, and a few other things, I tend to be rather scatter-brained and sometimes forget to follow up.

Ron

@skybwnd -

Hi, Scott -

I did some checking with my recipes, and it looks like I was slightly wrong, but possibly in a good way. I checked my books at home, and it appears that I don't have the Summer Wheat recipe, but I do have one for Cranberry Wheat, which might be closer than the Summer Wheat was. I am guessing that the only difference would be in the hops (The Chokecherry Wheat that I made used Fuggle hops, and it worked very well).

If you'd like this recipe, shoot me a PM with your email address. The recipe is in .pdf form, so I'll need to email it. Another option would be to get both of BBS's books, which have some seriously good-looking recipes that appear to be quite creative and well-thought-out. Recipes are written for both 1- and 5-gallon batches, along with quite a bit of other useful information. They are a bit expensive directly from BBS, but can be found for pennies on Amazon.

Let me know, if interested, and good luck!

Ron

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