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Cherry Stout Advice Column
Hey all, I am a relatively new brewer and wanted to try something ambitious. I am open and appreciative to any advice you can offer.
I am making a Cherry Stout in the style of Charlie Paparzian's recipe (pg 218, 3rd ed.). However I am adding a few twists.
I was planning on adding non-sweetened, baker's chocolate. I am not sure at what stage to add this though.
I was also planning on adding 1lb grade B maple syrup. Also not sure at what stage to add this.
The original recipe calls for 5lbs of sour cherries. I was unable to find sour cherries so instead I am subsituting 100% all natural cherry juice. I plan on using 3 8-ounce bottles after the boil at a temp of 160F for 15 min. Although I reckon I will loose some of the character of the whole cherries I figured that it would save me a lot of time if the lines got clogged with pits. Any thoughts?
I was also planning on making this an Imperial, with a desired ABV of 7-10%. I was not sure how much the cherry juice and maple syrup would add to the ABV. Any thoughts on how much I should expect and how much additional grains I should use accordinly?
Also, if I am raising the ABV that high should I use a certain kind of yeast?
I really appreciate any thoughts you guys have. Feel free to ask me any questions to verify anything.
Cheers
Link to juice:
http://www.cherrypharm.com/site/index.html
Link to recipe:
http://www.mindspring.com/~zipf-william … stout.html
You have a lot going on with this recipe! The baker's chocolate you want to be careful with, it can add bitterness, cocoa nibs are usually the best for an authentic choc flavor, use sparingly. Have you used maple syrup yet in a beer? It is very fermentable and gives a flavor a little different than you may think. I added a # to a bourbon vanilla porter, and got a flavor different than what I was looking for, good but different. If you haven't used it yet, you may not want to just so you can differentiate in this recipe where all the flavors are coming from.
If you are buying your cherry concentrate over the net, do a search for bellaton cherries, they are flash frozen, and I had them in a lambic once that was unbelievable, just another option for ya.
Last if it were me, I would use safale us-04 for the ferment, it rips through everything, and with your mix of fermentables in there you will want a nice ferment with high attenuation, so there is no cloying sweetness left behind. I use this in my RISs and get 1.090 worts down to the low 20s sometimes high teens.
Being a beginner I would advise following the recipe to the letter. you can always tweak later when you know what the origional product taste like. If you make it with all the changes you want to do you won't know what went wrong if it comes out different than you expected.
But if you want to do it then here's what I would try:
1) Look over recipes using maple syrup to see how much they use. One thing to consider is it is a sugar and will mostly be fermented and add alcohol while maybe not adding the flavor or type of flavor you are looking for.
I use molasses in a stout I make and you would not know I use molasses unless you read the recipe. I think it will be the same for maple syrup. I've never used it so I could be way off base but it is a sugar so it will mostly ferment out to alcohol.
2) Sour cherries and cherrie juice. You can get cherries in the forzen section of your local store. it won't be cheap. but they should do the job. Another option to consider is using a cherry puree or concentrate from your local homebrew supply. they are safe to add directly to the beer even in 2ndry since they are canned and would be sanitary. I use elderberry base in making wine and it's very good. they carry lots of different fruits. Cherry is always on the shelf so finding it should be a breeze. you can also order it and other stuff you need from midwest brew supply on the internet. I use them a lot and their prices are close to impossible to beat.
3) the bakers chocolate has oils in it that will retard head retention so be sure to compensate for it by using something that aids in head retention.
As far as when to add them:
the maple syrup and bakers chocolate I would add 30 to 15 minutes left in the boil. that will help make sure and nasties that might be present are killed.
the cherries I personally would go with the canned form a homebrew supplier. you are safe adding it in the 2ndry that way and the later you add it the less you'll need. if you add it in the boil you can do it at 15 minutes left like the syrup and chocolate.
I made a wheat peach ale and added the canned peach cocentrate in the 2ndry. It's up to you.
for anything you might want to add but not sure how much to use, try googling a recipe using what you want. like a maple ale, or chocolate ale, or cherry stout. that gives you a range of how much to use.
i recently made a raspberry ale that placed in a contest and never made a raspberry ale before. I looked up recipes using raspberries and found several that used 3 lbs but they also said they had to let the beer age an extra month since the raspberry was overpowering. So since I hate waiting for my beers I used a pound and a half. It was really good 3 weeks after bottling and took 3rd in the fruit beer catagory in a competition. So make sure you read comments about how the beers turned out, if they'd use less or more, etc. you can find whatever you're looking for on the internet with time and persistance.
good luck.
DC
Thanks folks for the feedback. I think I will drop the maple syrup and maybe the chocolate.
I plan to mix real cherries and the cherry juice.
Appreciate all the help.
Cheers
Don't forget you'll get some of that chocolate aroma/flavoring by adding some chocolate malt to your specialty grains. I think it would work well with this recipe.
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