Chocolate Cherry Stout question

[Tam004]

So I'm planning to so a chocolate cherry stout this weekend and I have a few questions. The recipe I'm using calls for adding the cherries to the primary and the chocolate nibs to the secondary. Do I add the cherries at the end of the boil or after it is cooled and in the primary? If I add them after the boil, do I have to sterilize them and how would I do that? I am planning on using frozen cherries that I will thaw and crush before adding them. Also, do I just add the chocolate nibs to the secondary or do I have to sanitize them?

This is my first brew that I'm trying that has any fruit or chocolate added so I just want to know the best way to get it right.

 

[bmick]

Few days old but figured I'd reply. Firstly, fruit usually goes in the secondary, it's strange that your recipe calls to put it in the primary. Vigorous fermentation can strip away fruit flavors pretty easily. But, if you're going with the primary, a good way to go about this would be to thaw, crush, then cover with water and bring up to 170 for 20 minutes to pasteurize, then you can add them in. Cacao nibs can just go right in the secondary, the alcohol produced during primary will keep any baddies at bay.

 

[Nashbrewer]

I would sanitize the cocao nibs in a couple ounces of vodka before adding them. The amount of alcohol in beer probably isn't enough to kill anything.

 

[Tam004]

I think I will wait to add the cherries in the secondary with the cocoa nibs. So could I sanitize the cherries by soaking them in vodka with the cocoa nibs?

 

[Trippel-A]

For what it's worth, we've always used hard liquor to sanitize things we've added to the secondary. We try to minimize the amount of sanitizer that gets into the beer. And in the case of spices, we've used the hard liquor to make an extract, and added that.

I'm also making a chocolate cherry stout with my brew buddies right now. We started from a milk stout extract kit, then added a pound of Hershey's cocoa powder right at the end of the boil--just long enough to mix it in and dissolve whatever can be dissolved.

We're adding canned Oregon tart cherries to the secondary this week; about 5 pounds. My question is, should we puree these in a sanitized blender or just put them straight into the secondary? Will it make a big difference in flavor? I'm thinking puree might let more cherry flavor into the beer, but whole ones are less likely to get stuck in our siphon when we rack back into our bottling vessel.

Any advice?

 

[Trippel-A]

Also, I meant to ask... How does adding tart cherries in the secondary affect the gravity? Our OG obviously didn't include the cherries, and now we're adding them, so whatever sugars are added to the beer will not be figured into our change in gravity calculation. Is there a way to compensate for this?

 

[Hoppin_Mad]

I have made a cherry stout a couple times. Both times I have added all of my cherries along with my aroma hop addition at about 10 minutes to go in the boil. I have gotten great cherry flavor this way. The only thing I would suggest is steering clear of frozen cherries. I have made the stout with fresh cherries and frozen and the difference is the difference between fresh cherry pie and cherry cough syrup.