Couple Questions on Cherry Beer

[goaliemanpat]

Just recently bought an American Wheat kit from our LHBS. Havnt gotten around to making it yet though. The other day the wife had a great cherry wheat when we were out to dinner. She mentioned we should try turning that kit into a cherry wheat. I agreed as well she is SWMBO. It did bring up a couple questions for me though.

1. We have great local cherries here in Michigan so I was thinking of using those. Then I noticed the little extract bottles. Does using the real cherries produce a better product to justify the extra hassle?

2. When pasteurizing/freezing the cherries do you pull the pits out?

3. I know when adding fruit to secondary I read that it fires up fermentation again and blow-offs would be needed. I recently made a batch of Skeeter Pee and it used potassium metabisulphite and potassium sorbate to prevent more fermentation once it finished. Are these ok to use in beer? We keg so no worries about having to carb in bottles.

Thanks for any help.

 

[Brewnoob1]

I have 2 different thoughts here. I made a coconut porter where I used both toasted coconut as well as coconut extract (bought in the small bottle at a whole foods store). The coconut brew was awesome. However, a fair warning...the extract did add a slight medicinal flavor to the brew. Not enough to make it unpleasant because the keg was blown in 1 day after a party. People raved how good it was....but to me, I could taste it. I didn't do anything to "kill" off the yeast though. So if you want the sweetness to come through, you may have to do something.

Secondly, I make a strawberry blonde with 6lbs of frozen strawberries. I don't do anything to them. Simply open the bag, poor them into the secondary, rack the beer on top and let it roll. Fermentation does pick up again but for me, not enough to use a blowoff.

Using non extract is the way to go if you have local cherries you can use. I don't see why you would need to pit them...unless you have an easy method to do so. If not, I don't see a problem using both fresh cherries (sanitizing them of course) as well as some extract. Just keep in mind the extract will lend a flavor to the beer other than straight cherry.

 

[Math0]

This is very interesting, but how do you sanitize everything that you want to add to secondary? Is cleaning fruits with hand soap then sodium metabisulfite then water is enough?

How does this work?