Cherry Chocolate Belgian Dubbel?

[christianpiatt]

My wife has tired of my porters and pale ales and has requested a "fruity belgian" style beer. I've found what I think is a good dubbel recipe to build from, but she also wants the cherry and chocolate flavors if possible.

My plan at the moment is to use 6 lbs of cherry puree in the secondary, along with 6 oz of roasted cocoa nibs, ground and soaked overnight in a bit of vodka. Figure on leaving in the secondary 7-10 days.

Question 1: What kind of cherries to use? Do they have to be fresh, or can they be frozen?

Question 2: Will the chocolate flavor form cocoa nibs even work in a dubbel? Mostly I know it's used in stouts or maybe porters. I don't want it to be simply a novelty, but actually complementary to the palate of the dubbel's flavor.

Anything else I should consider or change? Any and all advice is welcome. I've done a green chili/coffee porter and it turned out great, but I've never tried adding fruit or coffee/chocolate to a lighter beer.

 

[sdgenxr]

This sounds very tasty. I'd be interested to see how it turns out!

 

[tmurph6]

My opinion on chocolate is you can't really taste it since chocolate flavor as you know it is 80% sugar. I say buy high quality chocolate extract and add at bottling/kegging to taste. You'll get much better results. When I say high quality I mean not what you buy at the LHBS, spend the extra cash+ shipping and buy from a company like olive nation online.


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[christianpiatt]

OK I'm going with 4 oz chocolate extract from Olive Nation at bottling and 8 lbs cherry puree in the secondary. Will let you know how it goes.

 

[tmurph6]

Do yourself a favor and pour a pint with no chocolate and add drops taste. When your done extrapolate those drops to the entire batch. I did that with peach extract and I probably used 5% of the 4 oz bottle. The olivenation extract is extremely potent.


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