Adding Sour Cherries to Sour Beer

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abrdnck

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I brewed up 5 gallons of the golden sour recipe from the Rare Barrel yesterday. I pitched WLP 655 and I am a bit surprised to see fermentation take off already.

My plan is to let it get nice and sour and then rack it on to a mess of Nanking cherries that are in my freezer.

My questions: how long should I leave the beer in the primary before adding the cherries? How many lb of cherries should I add? My thought is 2-3 lb per gallon, as I want this to be strongly cherry flavoured.

Any advice is appreciated. This will be my 1st intentional sour.
 
I liked that blend at 12-15 months. 1-2 # of cherries per gallon after that
 
I have a RR Consecration clone that I rebrewed not long ago, substituting sour Cherries (technically tart cherries) for the currants of the original.
Per the recipe I had for the clone, I added the cherries at the start of secondary, when I added the bug blend. It was only a couple weeks ago I racked it, so I don't know how it's going to end up.
As far as how long to leave in primary before adding cherries, I would say let the primary mostly finish off before adding.
Are you primarying with the sour blend?
 
Yeah, I brewed up the golden sour and pitched the WLP655 directly into the carboy.

I have about 20 lb of sour cherries. Maybe I will make a few batches of a cherry stout and just use fresh cherries next year if it needs to sit in the primary for a year.
 
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