No cherry taste

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Poppajim

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I put together a recipe myself. It is basically a wheat beer, so I decided to try a cherry wheat again. The first time I used 2 oz of cherry flavoring, but tasted nothing. This time I added the balance of that bottle and another 4 oz bottle. 6 oz! Still no taste. Granted it carbed up in just 2 days, but I thought there would be SOME cherry taste. Nothing! Any ideas?
 
At what point are you adding the cherry in your process? And you said bottled cherry..is this concentrate or what?

Carbonated in two days...did you keg it I am guessing?
 
Added cherry to the bottling vessel along with the corn sugar, racked the wort on to that. I am still bottling. I used a cherry flavoring bought from the local HBS. I suspect the flavoring is weak. The bottle did recommend 2 oz per 5 gallon. I used enough for 15 gallons.
 
I've only used extract once and I wasn't impressed. It left a synthetic taste. From what I have seen on this forum the people who have the best results with it use it in conjunction with fresh fruit.
 
I owuld use Fresh/Frozen fruit in your secondary. let it sit for 2-3 weeks, and keg/bottle.
it'll be nice and pink, and nice and cherry-fied.
 
Yeah, I know what you mean. The first time I tried a cherry wheat, I used cherry puree. I thought I used a ton of it, but in the end, there was only a faint cherry flavor. For my next cherry beer, I tried cherry candi syrup. This one had even less cherry flavor in the end than the first. In fact, you wouldn't even know it was supposed to have cherry flavor in it if I didn't tell you. I tried a few other things on some other beers such as Mahleb (cherry seeds), but never got enough.

I think part of the reason I was so surprised is that I had tried a lot of other ingredients in much smaller amounts and gotten very powerful flavors, so I wondered how adding so much cherries could have almost no flavor at all.

Then I read in American Sour Beers about the recommended amount of cherries (fresh or frozen fruit). It said between 2.5 pounds and 10 pounds per 5 gallon batch was optimal. Well, that was wayyyy more than I imagined would be needed (considering how strong of a flavor cherries have), but I will tell you that when I do my next cherry beer (which will probably be a sour/wild beer this time, like an American lambic), I'll probably do between 5 and 10 pounds of fresh cherries frozen and then smashed.
 
I made a cherry stout and used 1 large can of cherry pie filling in 2.5 gallons and let it sit a week before kegging and the flavor came through pretty well.
 
Ive used just tart cherry juice into the fermenter post primary fermentation for a gose with good results.
 
I just made a 5 gallon cherry porter using 32ounces of Stanton Orchards Tart Cherry Concentrate. It had a nice secondary fermentation from the extra sugar, and ended up with a good cherry flavor and a nice pinkish head. I think It is a bit sour for my taste though, maybe I should have added some lactose.
 
I made a cherry stout and used 1 large can of cherry pie filling in 2.5 gallons and let it sit a week before kegging and the flavor came through pretty well.
Really! I looked at pie filling, but didn't think it would work. Thanks for that info.
 
I made a cherry stout and used 1 large can of cherry pie filling in 2.5 gallons and let it sit a week before kegging and the flavor came through pretty well.

Pie filling? I looked at that in the store, but didn't think it would work. Thanks for that tidbit.

Sorry for the double post. Still new to the forum thing. Rookie!
 
I'm going to be bottling my chocolate cherry stout this weekend and I'm hoping for a strong cherry flavor. I used a large can of cherry puree on 3rd day of primary. Then going to secondary I added 36 oz of black cherry juice and 2 hole bourbon vinella beans. We shall see how it turns out.
 
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