cherries in season! kriek brewers - give me your wisdom

[ddrrseio]

almost a year ago, i followed northern brewer's dawson's kriek recipe, including using oregon fruit's puree. it's nearly time to bottle it, and with cherry picking season beginning, i am eager to take a more personalized approach.

i emailed oregon fruits for some advice on their blend and got the following:

We use a blend of variety (Bing and/or Lambert and/or Van) dark sweet cherries with a smaller amount of light sweet (Royal Anne) cherries.



I takes about 340 *– 380 cherries to produce one 3 lb can of cherry puree.



Thanks for your inquiry! Let me know if you have any additional questions.

headed to brentwood, ca this weekend to collect tons and tons of cherries. i'm looking to collect a ton of varieties: bing, brooks, sweet anne, lampert, van, coral champagne and more.

the plan is to brew 10 gallons and rack the beer onto each cherry and blend much, much later to taste.

all advice is welcome: variety, size, weight/gallon, choice of yeast and bugs, sanitation procedure, etc.

i plan to use wyeast lambic blend again.

 

[bigljd]

Not a kriek expert, but I believe the cherries are normally added when the lambic is near the end of it's aging process so the beer retains more of the fruit flavors. You might want to brew the lambic this year and buy the cherries next year and add them to the lambic for a month or two.

 

[passedpawn]

Not a kriek expert, but I believe the cherries are normally added when the lambic is near the end of it's aging process so the beer retains more of the fruit flavors. You might want to brew the lambic this year and buy the cherries next year and add them to the lambic for a month or two.

Or follow through with your picking adventure, use some in the kriek you are about to bottle, and freeze the rest. Sounds like you are excited about picking the fruit.

And make a cherry pie!

 

[bigljd]

And make a cherry pie!

And share some with us Happy Picking

 

[tasq]

Those really aren't the type of cherry you want to use, as they will contribute little to no flavor. You want a tart or sour fruit like Montmorency cherries.

 

[ddrrseio]

thanks everyone. i was planning to freeze the cherries until i used them

has anyone else used oregon fruit's cherry puree? that is the composition they use. i tasted a bit before adding it, and it definitely had an unmistakably cherry flavor. do you not expect the flavor to survive the bugs?

i suppose i am curious if anyone has used these varieties and how they've held up. these seem to be what grow around here, so i am not sure i can find tarter, more sour cherries!

 

[microbusbrewery]

Those really aren't the type of cherry you want to use, as they will contribute little to no flavor. You want a tart or sour fruit like Montmorency cherries.

That's my understanding too, that you want to use tart/sour/pie cherries rather than sweet. I can't remember for sure so take this with a grain of salt, but I thought I remembered reading somewhere that sweet cherries tend to give you more of cough syrup like flavor and the tart cherries don't. Maybe someone that's tried both can provide better feedback. I just planted a tart cherry tree a couple weeks ago pretty much just for being able to age beers on them.

 

[ddrrseio]

i got 9 lb of mostly very ripe black tart cherries. getting some montmorency isn't impossible but will take some more work in california. if you guys think these would be a disaster, i'll probably go ahead and do that

 

[rorygilmore]

Oregon Fruit produces 3 different cherry products. The information they sent you was for their Royal Anne Cherries... you don't want to use that blend. You want to use their Montmorency pie cherries: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000I6625I/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

I've never heard of black tart cherries before, but before adding them to a year-old sour I'd do a taste test side by side with some Montmorency to see how they compare. If you can't find fresh Montmorency, can or dried would be worthy for comparison purposes. You can probably find either of these at a local grocery store.

 

[AmandaK]

As a side note to the varieties of cherries, I would personally prefer to get the pit out of the cherry before adding them to the beer whole. I've done it with the pit and it definitely gives a sort of "woody/hard" character to it. Only somewhat noticeable, but it's still there.

Some people prefer adding them with the pits, it's just something that I won't do again. YMMV.

 

[tasq]

As a side note to the varieties of cherries, I would personally prefer to get the pit out of the cherry before adding them to the beer whole. I've done it with the pit and it definitely gives a sort of "woody/hard" character to it. Only somewhat noticeable, but it's still there.

Some people prefer adding them with the pits, it's just something that I won't do again. YMMV.

It's a preference thing. I'd never go pit out!

 

[elproducto]

I'm going to rack 2.5 gallons of my Gose onto some cherries. What is the general consensus on using cherries. Wash and throw in whole? Wash and Mash up?

 

[BryanThompson]

Freeze and thaw, it breaks the cell walls.

 

[ddrrseio]

what kind of ratios do you guys use? is 1lb/gal montmorencies enough?

 

[ReverseApacheMaster]

I hear with cherries you can never have enough. Probably want to look at starting with 2lbs of fruit (so no pits) per gallon.

 

[Ice9]

The last dubbel that I aged on cherries, got 7 pounds of sour cherries and 5 pounds of dark sweet cherries. All washed, pitted and frozen.
This year it's going to be 12-15 pounds of sour cherries. This is in a 5 gallon batch. And in a sour beer I'd definitely go all sour cherries.

 

[ddrrseio]

thanks!

i think what i will do given i asked for only 5lbs of montmorency cherries and that i have 9lbs of dark sweet cherries is i will split the lambic. i'll shoot for 6 gal postboil w/a blowoff and eventually do three 2 gal fruit additions. 5 lbs tart, 6 lbs sweet and something else entirely different to satisfy my wife.

many suggest adding the fruit directly to primary so the bugs can continue to consume the trub, so i'll mix it back into solution and then rack it into three individual 3gal fermenters.