Critique My Sour Cherry Chocolate Stout

[Cheesy_Goodness]

I've been wanting to put together a big cherry stout for a while now and since I promised my wife a beer for when she's done being pregnant I figured this is as good of a time as any to go for it.

I've put together recipes before but nothing like this so I'll take all the help I can get. Every commercial cherry stout I've had has been seriously lacking in the cherry department so I'm thinking most of my flavor should come from later in the process.

I'm shooting for this to end up with 2.5 gallons in the keg.

Here's what I'm thinking:
6 lbs marris otter
1 lb munich
1 lb crystal 80
1 lb toasted flaked barley (toasted by me)
1 lb pale chocolate*
4 oz roasted barley*
*Milled ~24 hours before brewing, will add the tea to the kettle at flameout

Hop Schedule:
1 oz Fuggle @ 60 minutes
8 oz Lactose @ Flameout
1 seeded Vanilla Bean @ Flameout
1 TBSP Cocoa Powder @ Flameout

The plan is after high krausen I'll add about a quart of Tart Cherry Juice to a pan and reduce it down a little. I'll add that and some vodka soaked cacao nibs and wait for it all to finish out.

When it's finished I'll rack it on to a small amount of oak chips to round it out and add more cherry juice or cacao nibs to taste.

Comments/suggestions/funny jokes are welcome.

 

[NOISEpollution]

Sounds like it’s going to be great but a few suggestions:

Might want to consider cutting all of your specialty grains except the roasted barley in half as it seems your base malt percentage may be a tad low.

I’d also consider cutting the vanilla bean in half and adding it to secondary for a few days instead of adding a whole bean at flameout. As small as they are, they carry a ton of flavor and I find that flavor plays best on the cold side.

And last suggestion might be to rack on to a pound or two of frozen or dehydrated cherries into the secondary to bring out the flavor of real cherry. Most cherry juice is not actual cherry juice and is usually blended with either pomegranate or cranberry. Whole cherries will round out that flavor for you.

Sounds delicious though and look forward to hearing how it comes out. Cheers!

 

[Cheesy_Goodness]

Cheers, thanks for the reply

I think you're right on cutting most of the specialty grains in half, especially the crystal. I may scale back the pale chocolate to .75 pounds only because I really like that malt. Flaked barley could probably use some trimming too.

I didn't want too much vanilla but it seemed like it fit here so you're probably right on cutting that back too. Would adding half of the amount on the cold side make it more or less noticeable?

As far as the cherry juice goes I think I found a pretty good brand (http://www.rwknudsenfamily.com/products/single-fruit-juices/just-tart-cherry). I picked up some of this a while for research purposes and it is pretty tart, not a sugary sweet cherry cocktail like you'd find most places. Ingredients are water and cherry juice concentrate.

 

[Calder]

I think your grains are OK, it is a stout after all.

I would mash the chocolate and Roast, to add a 'roast' favor to the stout .... it is a stout after all.

I'm puzzled where the 'sour' comes in to this. You are using Lactose to make it sweet. I would mash higher rather than use lactose (personal preference).

Try using real fruit, and include pits. The pits provide an almond flavor to the beer.

 

[Bokito]

In my experience, juice can add a lot of fruit flavor. Just be sure to use 100% cherry juice. It doesn't matter if the juice tastes tart or not, the yeast will ferment out all sweet taste anyway. It will be tart.
I would not boil in juice, you have a good to fair chance losing some flavor.
Also, consider that you need a lot of fruit for fruit taste. For a strong cherry taste, I use ~300g cherries per liter (very roughly 2.2lb/gallon). You will need that to compete with the roasted flavors. I don't know how that equates to juice.

Cheers,
Benno

 

[Cheesy_Goodness]

I think your grains are OK, it is a stout after all.

I would mash the chocolate and Roast, to add a 'roast' favor to the stout .... it is a stout after all.

I'm puzzled where the 'sour' comes in to this. You are using Lactose to make it sweet. I would mash higher rather than use lactose (personal preference).

Try using real fruit, and include pits. The pits provide an almond flavor to the beer.

Thanks for the post

I don't know if it's my water or something in my process but I haven't had any luck with adding roasted malts to the mash. It ferments and makes beer but the taste is off somehow. Steeping makes the finished product come out smoother. YMMV

It's meant to be a stout with sour cherries, not a soured cherry stout. I hadn't even thought about mash temperature yet though, I should be mashing higher than normal. I only thought about lactose because it seemed to go with the chocolate side of the recipe...might not be necessary though.

I'd use real tart cherries if I could find them. The closest I've been able to find is dehydrated (no pits). They tasted alright but if I recall they had a lot of preservatives. That'll be less of a problem if this beer ends up in a keg but right now I'm not sure how I'll end up packaging it. In your experience was the almond flavor noticeable using real cherries with pits?

In my experience, juice can add a lot of fruit flavor. Just be sure to use 100% cherry juice. It doesn't matter if the juice tastes tart or not, the yeast will ferment out all sweet taste anyway. It will be tart.
I would not boil in juice, you have a good to fair chance losing some flavor.
Also, consider that you need a lot of fruit for fruit taste. For a strong cherry taste, I use ~300g cherries per liter (very roughly 2.2lb/gallon). You will need that to compete with the roasted flavors. I don't know how that equates to juice.

Cheers,
Benno

Cheers, thanks for the reply
That's a good point about not boiling the cherry juice. My reason for doing that was to not reduce the gravity/abv quite so much but realistically it's going to be a big stout either way.

I don't have a clue how it translates to juice either. My guess is I'll need at least the original 32 ounces in the recipe for a 2.5 gallon batch, but the rest is going to have to be to taste after the beer is mostly done.

 

[myndflyte]

There's an experiment I've always wanted to try to make a cherry stout and that is use the yeast strain BM45. It's described as a Red wine strain. Big cherry aromatics and flavor. I've read that it produces a big body with a smooth, round mouthfeel. The only issue is that it's a killer yeast strain so any ale yeast would get killed off by this strain. It also apparently is a picky yeast so I don't know if conditions would be right to pitch it after ale fermentation.

Anyway, these are just my ramblings and a beer you want ready for your wife after being pregnant is probably something you don't want to experiment too much with. I think the recipe looks good and as others have said, if you use 100% cherry juice, I think you should be good. If you don't get the cherry flavor you want, you could always add some cherry extract to taste (https://www.midwestsupplies.com/che...ZPi0qAc-0QiDz1kYG8u28OjIEKnbcmmhoCBgMQAvD_BwE)

Some people don't like using extract but if you take it slow and don't just dump it in, I think you can dial in the correct flavor.

 

[Queequeg]

You don't need the lactose. You can always back sweeten with it if you need to.

As for the grain bill, it looks fine. You can easily increase the roast barley to 0.5lb.

Mash high and don't skimp on the crystal the fruit with dry out the beer significantly and you need more residual dextrins to balance this.

 

[Cheesy_Goodness]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I picked up the grain today and will make a starter this evening. Hoping to do this Sunday morning. I'll post what the final recipe ended up being and update when something exciting happens.

 

[Cheesy_Goodness]

I got this brewed last week. Here's what I ended up settling on:

2.5 Gallon Batch
Grain Bill:
6 pounds Marris Otter
1 pound Munich
12 oz Crystal 80
12 oz toasted flaked barley
5 oz black patent*
12 oz pale chocolate*
*Steeped in two quart containers at room temp water for about 18 hours and added the tea at flameout.

Shot for a mash temp of 156F

Kettle Additions:
90 Minute Boil
1 oz Fuggle 4.2% AA @ FWH
3 oz semi-sweet bakers chocolate @ 90
1 tsp yeast nutrient @ flameout
2 tsp dark cacao powder @ flameout
1 lb Sparkling Amber DME @ flameout **
Roasted grain tea @ flameout
**My original plan was a 60 minute boil but I must have overshot my sparge volume because the gravity after boiling for 60 minutes was only 1065. So, I tacked on another 30 minutes and added some DME to bump it up

OG was 1087

I ended up ditching the lactose and vanilla for now. I'm pretty happy with where the gravity ended up and the more I thought about it the more I convinced myself that vanilla would clash with the cherries more than enhance them. Still open to adding them later if I think it warrants it.

I pitched a modest 400mL starter of WLP002 which I had on a stir plate for about 18 hours prior to pitching. It all went into a 5 gallon carboy and into the fermentation fridge @ 18.3C (~65F). There was no airlock activity until late Monday/Early Tuesday. By late Tuesday it was chugging along and had a nice thick dense looking krausen going on. By Wednesday things were still pretty active but slowing down, so I added a full 32oz of RW Knudesn's "Just Tart Cherry" juice.

The fermentation fridge smelled pretty convincingly of chocolate so I'm pretty happy about that. I'll taste it in another week or so to see if it could use more cherry juice. When that's done I'll rack it onto some cacao nibs and a few oak chips.

 

[BongoYodeler]

@Cheesy_Goodness - I'm thinking of doing something similar. How did this turn out? Anything you'd do differently? Thanks.

 

[SanPancho]

Few things ive come across that relate

Bm45 can give some cherry. But it is killer and it doesnt eat maltotriose, so you have to finish it with a yeast that will eat the malto and that it wont kill. Kv1116 will work, or a brett strain.

The problem with using juice is that it typically dilutes your beer. But boiling (i assume) will give you pectin haze and likely diminish flavor. Options? Try freeze distilling the juice to concentrate it. Use a good quality extract to boost flavor. Supposedly dehydrated fruit has big flavor, but it’s expensive and as noted wont have the pits.

One technique i just heard about but havent tried- ferment the juice on its own. Maybe with the bm45 yeast since its all simple sugars? Then combine. It wouldn’t help the dilution problem, but was told it preserves alot more of the fruit flavor. Again, this is second hand reference, but it does sound intriguing.

 

[505-Brewer]

Use concentrate instead of juice. Works great.

 

[SanPancho]

Use concentrate instead of juice. Works great.

you have a concentrate source/product? or were you referring to the freeze and concentrate method?

 

[Cheesy_Goodness]

@BongoYodeler I believe I might still have a bit of this left in the keg. Wife was on a diet for most of the year so I think I left the keg alone. I'll check tonight or tomorrow and see how it ended up after more than a year.

If I recall, it was a very tasty beer but the cherry was, unsurprisingly, very difficult to detect. If you've got a source for good quality sour cherries or some concentrate like 505 mentioned I'd start there. I think I briefly thought about boiling and reducing some sour cherry juice and adding it but I was afraid of losing the aromatics. I kinnda wish I had done it, but who knows if that would have actually helped. Hadn't thought about concentrating it by freezing, that sounds like a winner if you're going to use juice.
I'm wondering if adding a touch of acid blend or something similar post fermentation would have helped to trick me into tasting more cherry.

 

[Cheesy_Goodness]

I kept it in a keg under pressure for about 8 months in a room that during the summer could be as warm as 80F. That was a dumb move, because the beer didn't age super well. What little cherry was there is now totally gone, and even the chocolate is hard to pick out. Overall it was OK but it definitely peaked months and months ago.
I'll probably try to brew something like this again in the future but I'd definitely treat the chocolate and cherries differently.

Good luck Bongo

 

[BongoYodeler]

Thanks Cheesy Goodness. I'm a big fan of stouts and Trader Joe's Tart Cherry Juice - not from concentrate. I was wondering if pouring the (48oz?) bottle into the fermenter prior to adding the wort would make sense. Either that or at the tail end of active fermentation, much like what is done with the Lemon Lime Hefe in the recipe section.

 

[Cheesy_Goodness]

@BongoYodeler
The tail end of fermentation made sense to me too, but either the rest of the grain bill was too much or the cherry was too little.
Good luck, hopefully yours turns out better than mine!