Cherries and Cocoa

[Franky]

I've been reading as many threads on cocoa (nibs, powder, bars, etc) and fruit additions as I can. Everything is starting to blur together. So I thought I'd start my own thread and get some "fresh" advice and perspective.

I have a deep dark wheat beer in primary. I'm looking in the next day or two to split the batch, I want to put cherries and chocolate on one half and keep the other half of the batch un-touched.

I will be using cocoa powder, does anyway see any problems with me just adding the cocoa powder to the cherries when I'm pasteurizing them, instead of water or vodka as some do?

It will be 3 gal. and my ratio so far:
2lbs Cherries
1 oz. Cocoa Powder

Does this look acceptable, or would you add more or less? I do want the cherries to shine through, but not overly powerful and just a slight hint of chocolate.

Also these are cherries from my in-laws back yard. They washed them and then froze them, I didn't have enough space in the freezer when I brought them back with me so I stuck them in the fridge. There is now a lot of cherry juice in the gallon jug since thawing. Should I get rid of most of the juice before secondary and just pasteurize the cherries and use what that produces? I'm afraid with the amount of juice that is there it will overpower the beer.

Any input, advice, warnings, would be great appreciated!

 

[RonPopeil]

not sure about the cocoa. most chocolate beers i've looked into use chocolate malt and/or unsweetened baking chocolate in the boil. since you're in fermenters already you could be out of luck. couldn't hurt to try but it also may not do anything at room temp.

cherries are another case. i would consider honey and cherries if your recipe will tolerate the additional dryness. you could make a syrup from the honey and some water and then add the cherries to that mixture. cool and add to secondary. i feel that just the cherries will boost your gravity a bit. the idea of honey is that it sounds good in that beer style and will help sanitize the cherries.

2lbs would be a bit heavy for 3 gals. i would consider that much for 5-6 gals of a fairly strong beer. 1.060 or more. maybe a half lb or so?

 

[Franky]

RonPopeil, thanks for the input.

OG on it was 1.065.

I've seen many places suggesting 4-5lbs cherries for a 5 gal batch. So I guess I just assumed wrong when I figured I should just cut the amount in half. Maybe I'll do just a little over a pound then...

 

[icebrew]

If you want to keep the chocolate subtle then used cracked coaco nibs in the secondary will give a nice chocolate nose and residual chocolate flavor. I would use 2-3oz.

This is what I did to make my choc cherry wheat and it was gone in a weekend. I didn't use fresh cherries though I created and used cherry pie filling in last 5 min of the boil.

Chris

 

[Franky]

Thanks Chris,
My problem is I don't have access to cocoa nibs that I know of, although I'm going to try one other store tomorrow. I'm currently not in the good ol USA. Thus, the reason for using cocoa powder, which I can get where I'm currently living.

If I do get lucky enough to find some cocoa nibs you suggest 2-3oz for 3gal? Did you just drop them in secondary or did you soak in vodka or boil in water?

 

[icebrew]

That 2-3 was a suggestion for your 3 gals, I use 4 Oz for 5

I soaked then in vodka for 3 days and dumped nibs and vodka into the fermenter for 5 days.

 

[Franky]

Here is an update on the brew and how it turned out.

I Bottled 1gal of the Dark Wheat on October 26th. Then racked the other 4gal over 2.2lbs of fresh Cherries and 3.3oz cocao nibs.

I soaked the cocoa nibs on 2oz of Vodka and 2oz of Jack Daniels for 3 weeks. It wasn't ment to be 3 weeks but something came up that pushed my bottleing back a bit. Threw it all into the secondary.

Since the cherries were fresh from the tree in the back yard I was a bit worried about how clean they were. I ended freezing them and then putting them into a pot and boiling with the lid on for 10min. I then "mashed" them up a bit and threw them in pits and all.

I left it all in the secondary for 2 weeks then bottled.

When I tasted it about a month later I was a pretty dissapointed. I'm not going to pretend like I know how to "judge" a beer using all the proper terms...but the best why I can describe it was unbalanced. Everything was ripe and stood out, there was no harmony to the beer at all. So I let it sit...

Fast forward to last week and I popped one open. It was really good, all that ripe sharpness had faded and all the flavours had started to smooth out and work together in harmony. If I lived where I could get kits whenever I wanted I'd put this on the regular line up for the spring and fall months.

In the end I'd make a few changes...probably pull back the cherries to about 1.5lbs and add at least another oz of cocoa nibs. Maybe the cocoa will come through in a few months but judging by the fact my friends love it and I do as well...don't think it's going to last that long!

Thanks to those of you who gave me advice and helped me along the way!