Chocolate and Cherries

[Owly055]

I'm planning my next stout using my most recent stout for a foundation.

That stout used 4.2% Carafa II 4.2% chocolate malt, and an equal weight of unsweetened cocoa

I would like to include cherries in some form. I'm up in the air as to how to introduce the cherry flavor. Should I do it in the boil, the primary, secondary, or as bottling syrup? If it were cherry season, I would consider fresh squeezed Bing cherry juice in each bottle. I'm considering simply adding a can of cherry pie filling near the end of the boil.

I'd like to hear accounts of how other brewers have used cherries and what the results were before embarking on this. Knowing what and how much to use is kind of a crap shoot.


H.W.

 

[giraffe]

Ive only used fresh cherries before. I added 1.5 lbs per gallon of depitted smashed cherries to the secondary. It gave the beer a nice cherry flavor, you might want to use more in a dark beer, Ive only used it in more delicately flavored beers. Ive never done any other method, but that method certainly worked. Unfortunately you have a few months before cherries are in season, but I imagine, frozen would be much the same.

 

[Chris_The_Rogue]

You should be able to find canned cherries in the cake/pie isle. Ive heard of peoplw using them foe beer but i dont know the pros and cons

 

[daksin]

Don't use pie filling. it will have a ton of stabilizers, corn starch, etc that you do not want in your beer. Go for canned cherries, sour cherries if possible, as they will have the best flavor. Sweet cherries do not contribute as much flavor to the beer. You may also be able to find them frozen, which is also good.

 

[Owly055]

I'm not in a real hurry on this one, but I like to have a stout aging all the time. I'll probably do this one sometime in early April...... It really ought to be a seasonal brew done in early summer and ready to drink in October of November.

Thanks for the good advice and suggestions........ any thoughts on the combination of chocolate, cherries, and Nelson Sauvin in a stout? It just makes sense to me when I sip one of my Nelson Chocolate Stouts. Nelson seems to pair well with the chocolaty flavor, but my experience with Nelson is that it also pairs extremely well with the "stone fruit" hops, and not so well with citrus.


H.W.

 

[JDWebb]

Don't use pie filling. it will have a ton of stabilizers, corn starch, etc that you do not want in your beer. Go for canned cherries, sour cherries if possible, as they will have the best flavor. Sweet cherries do not contribute as much flavor to the beer. You may also be able to find them frozen, which is also good.

You can get tart cherry pie filling without preservatives, starch and such. It's just tart cherries packed in water. Same section as the thick pie filling cherries.

 

[Owly055]

You can get tart cherry pie filling without preservatives, starch and such. It's just tart cherries packed in water. Same section as the thick pie filling cherries.

Thanks

H.W.

 

[passedpawn]

Yea, Oregon tart cherries packed in water (montemercy) are available on Amazon pretty cheap by the case. I've bought them there, and at Walmart. About the same price. I've overdone it before and ended up with a beer that was on the tart side (dumped a keg of this yesterday that I hadn't touched in months).

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000I6625I/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

 

[JDWebb]

I have a chocolate stout going right now, and I'm debating on dumping a 32oz container of Knudsen's Tart Cherry Juice in with some cocoa nibs rather than wanting to do a bunch of cleanup on spent cherries!

 

[6midgets]

Do you have to sanitize ingredients that come from a can or jar?

 

[JDWebb]

I dunk the jar/bottle/can in StarSan for a few moments, but no, they're already sanitized by the canning/bottling process.

 

[moodyflyboy]

My brewing partner and I made a chocolate cherry stout. We used 2 pounds of frozen dark red cherries per gallon. Turned out excellent. Will give you a sweeter taste vs tart cherries.

 

[moodyflyboy]

Placed them in the secondary.