How to use cherries

oliver

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My Dunkelweiss is finishing up, and I want to split batch in the secondary, and use cherries in half.

Is it better to smash up some cherries and add real fruit to the secondary? Or, should I get some cherry extract flavoring?

And then the other question, which i can probably answer myself by having a little snack, Black Cherries? Red Cherries? ...uh, maraschino? gross. nevrmind. Anyone have specific experiences with particular cherries and their methods?

Recipe:
70% White Wheat
20% Dark Munich
5% Midnight Wheat
5% Honey malt

100% Mittlefruh

German Wheat 3333
 
If you add real fruit, it will ferment. Just be prepared with headspace.
 
Cherries just mashed up and pitched in carry a lot of wild yeasts with them. You'll need to pasteurize: Mash them up, put them in your oven at 160 degrees for 30 minutes, let them cool then add them. I generally use cherry puree, sanitary. Add them to primary late in the fermentation to preserve as much flavor as possible.
 
primary ferm has finished, i'm lowering the chamber to upper 30s until sunday.

I also can't seem to find cherries in any grocery around me. I'll need to check the high end places.

I did buy the 100% black cherry juice with bottling in mind, i don't think it's what i'm looking for. I still might prime one or two bottles with the juice and see how it turns out.
 
HOWEVER, i recently had Bell's Cherry Stout, which was pretty good. On their website the title says "Stout brewed with cherry juice" .. Hm. OK, looking promising for using juice

But then it also says, "Cherry Stout gains its signature tartness from 100% Montmorency cherries grown in Michigan's Traverse City region." ... which means, perhaps they got cherries from the region and juiced them?

I'm leaning on just using the juice now, but i still need to settle on a method, whether that be in the secondary, or in the bottle.. I'm definitely going to split batch, so i won't ruin half of it.
 
If you bottle with the cherry juice be sure to check the gravity points of the juice and ad accordingly. Bottle bombs are dangerous.
 
If you bottle with the cherry juice be sure to check the gravity points of the juice and ad accordingly. Bottle bombs are dangerous.
i know all about that. I believe off the top of my drunk head that the juice is 33g of sugar per 8oz serving. So, just need to multiply that into however many grams of priming sugar we usually use, and then i'll understand the amount of servings, multiply that, and boom goes the dynamite.
 
update: popped the dunkelweiss primed with black jerry juice. Big cherry aroma, not a lot of cherry flavor. Lotta cherry aftertaste in the burp. Plus seems a bit under-carbed. I guess I could have used more cherry juice to prime if we want to go that route again next year, probably 1.5x or even 2x more.
 

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