Sour Cherry Ale - Extreme Brewing

[drhall23]

I am looking to follow the Sour Cherry Ale recipe from the Sam Calagione - Extreme Brewing Book.
I am very new to home-brewing. I have only made three batches of beer and they were from Brewer's Best Home kits, and have turned out great. So now I feel it is time to move on to home-brewing from scratch, per se.
I have read this recipe numerous times, but now my wife is interrupting it differently....what do i need for the cherries?

Do i need ONE of the following : 10lbs crushed sour red cherries OR 7lbs frozen cherries OR 2lbs dried cherries
OR
Do I need 10lbs crushed sour red cherries AND 7lbs frozen cherries OR 2lbs dried cherries

Is my question confusing? I guess better put...do I need one type of the listed cherries or a combination?

any help would be appreciated. If I need sour red cherries, any suggestions on where to find them during the winter? or what can be used as a close substitute?

 

[ReverseApacheMaster]

Any one of the three.

You may be able to find them frozen at a health food store or even a regular grocery store in the dessert area. You should also be able to find sour cherry juice that will work. If you go the juice route it will take a lot of juice to get a good cherry flavor, which results in watering down the beer. You may need to bump up the rest of the recipe to accommodate that.

I do NOT recommend using the sour cherry pie filling or sour cherries in water you find in the grocery store. They have had most of the juice removed so they will contribute minimal flavor and color.

You can find sour cherry puree (Oregon) in HBS and most grocery stores and wal-mart. People seem to have good success with that.

 

[drhall23]

Thanks for input.
I am going to try the dried cherries route.

 

[drhall23]

I have decided to go with the 7lbs of frozen cherries because the store was out of dried cherries and sour cherries.
Anything I have to do with the frozen cherries before adding to my wort, other than crushing them, or can they go from bag to wort?

 

[phantomtiger]

How did the Sour Cherry Ale turn out?

 

[drhall23]

How did the Sour Cherry Ale turn out?

I am sorry I forget to post my feedback on this. My Sour Cherry Ale, I think as well as everyone that has sampled it, turned out great! I have made 2 other batches since (Guinness Clone and Blood Orange Hefeiwzien), and the Sour Cherry Ale is still my favorite, among everyone else.

Lessons Learned:
I did created some "Cherry Bombs" though. So next batch will need less priming sugar to avoid beer from flying out of bottle when opened...it is funny to watch it happen to my wife though
Frozen Cherries were fine.
Need to filter a few times. The bottles filled at the end had heavy sediment in the bottom

 

[Schoenbrau]

I brewed last spring with sour pie cherries acquired from a butcher shop. The beer came out with an overpowering hoppiness bordering on a gross medicine-like taste. I don't think I did anything wrong during the brew or afterwards, I've also been brewing for 8 years and actually am a fermentation scientist at a biofuels research firm so I really doubt it was something with my technique.

What has the beer tasted like when you guys have made it?

 

[drhall23]

I don't recall clearly. I haven't made it again. But it was close to Sam adams cherry



Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[microbusbrewery]

Medicine taste from hops? Or cherry medicine taste? Medicine taste in beer is usually related to chlorophenols (plastic, band-aid). I've heard sweet cherries can give you cherry medicine flavors whereas tart cherries do not.

 

[Schoenbrau]

I'd have to crack another open and really think about a better way to describe it but my memory says it was really bitter with a weird earthiness. It makes me think of a kind of tea you'd drink for health benefits and definitely not the taste. There was a cherry note to it with a little woodiness from the pits but both of these were masked by the bad.