"Cherries in the Snow"

[Jeremy Dunn]

I'm going to brew this recipe from Charlie Papazian's, "The Complete Joy of Home Brewing" in a couple weeks. Here's a list of ingredients for 5 gallons:

8.5 lbs Alexander's light malt extract syrup
1.5 oz Tettnanger hop pellets (boiling)
0.5 oz Tettnanger hops (finishing)
10 lbs tart cherries (mine are frozen and pitted)
ale yeast (I'll be using 6 g of "Muntons Premium Gold")

This will be my 3rd brew ever (others were very successful!), but I've never used fruit before and because all these ingredients ended up costing more than my previous experiments I was curious if anyone has some tips or suggestions. Anyone tried this recipe before? It says to add the cherries during primary fermentation.

Thanks!
Jeremy

[Chris Alvey]

I would say that you would want to wait until your fermentation is slowing down then fill another fermenter with the cherries then carefully rack your beer onto them.

There will still be some fermentation and some general fuss from the cherries and dissolved CO2, so you should leave a fair amount of head space but this is better than having a lot of the aromatics carried away in the primary fermentation. Also you will be able to gauge the amount of space needed much easier as well as getting off the initial yeast in the case of a lengthy fermentation.

[sirgiovanni]

You're welcome to try mine before you brew yours for ideas. I used 10 lbs but in a 10 gallon batch and wouldn't have wanted any more of a cherry flavor than what I got, it's pretty intense and thats even with belgian yeast and a lot of hidden alcohol. I added mine to the secondary.

[Jeremy Dunn]

I see, so from what I gather:

A.) Adding the cherries to the primary would loose the some of the cherry flavor (even using 10 lbs?) and possibly be messy.

B.) If I were to add them to the secondary, 10 lbs is way too much for a 5 gallon batch.

sirgiovanni, what type of beer did you make with cherries? And what yeast? I would love it if I could get a lambic type flavor.

What I think I may do is go ahead and invest in 2 extra fermentation vessels and split the batch up and follow the recipe verbatim for one half and experiment with the rest.

[sirgiovanni]

personally I think that fruit gets a weird flavor out of the primary. It still ferments in the secondary but that's all that is going on, the other sugars are done. The flavor seems stronger in the end, like you said. Too strong is up to your taste. If you are talking about a traditional lambic, I would say 1 lb per gallon in the secondary is more than enough. If you are talking about a modified lambic like lindeman's, you'll need to possibly go a tad bit stronger but you'll need a bunch of unfermentable sugars too.

I used a belgian strong yeast and finished at 1.020, 8.3%.
give me a call if you want to taste this one.
453 1685

[Jeremy Dunn]

Thanks, I'll give you a ring this evening unless there's a more convenient time I should. What's your first name?

[sirgiovanni]

Father Jimmy