I’m going to work on a Supplication-inspired beer with a few people. One of the crucial ingredients in dried sour cherries. Questions:
Is there a fundamental difference between fresh and dried cherries for this project?
I found an internet source for dried cherries (apparently the Turks in Belgium use it a lot), but they contain sunflower oil. I assume that’s problematic?
What’s a good site for cherries in the US?
If we would opt for fresh instead of dried cherries, what amount would be the equivalent?
Yes, I know, funny that this question has to come from someone from Sour Cherry Land…
Unless you have access to really fresh cherries I would think dried would be a good option. I like nuts online for stuff like that but don’t know if they ship overseas. They’re not cheap but there products are always amazing and they ship fast.
Water - the abv% bump from using fresh fruit is basically negated by the amount of water in the fruit.
Yeah, I wouldn’t want to use them if they are packed in/coated in sunflower oil.
I’d recommend this tarty cherry concentrate. It’s tart, of high quality, and has less water than puree. I use it in fruit beers for my wife. You might need to do a small test batch to hit the amount of cherry flavor you want :
Sure, it would take that long to break down completely the dried cherries and extract their flavor. No such problem with a puree. Between hard to get, oil covered dried fruit and this product, I know what I’d use.
My real question would be the following: if I make a Supplication-like sour beer, would using dried cherries lead to a better result than using fresh cherries? Anyone who has experience with the two?
Not enough to be any kind of authority on it, but I do know that fresh takes a lot more to have the flavor come through like you would get from a quality puree.
I used them dried in a mead that’s aging. The oil floats and you can rack from beneath it. The oil doesn’t spread thru your batch. I added a lot of dried Montmorency right after primary and got lower than expected flavor. The last lb I added was rehydrated with boiling water first overnight. Huge difference in flavor contribution. But thats mead, not sure it applies.
If you can manage to source enough dried (oil free) cherries, I say go per the Supplication method. If not, I’m just saying that this concentrate will make a really nice beer.
I’ve used dried cherries a couple of times, but I prefer flash-frozen fresh cherries. I get these from a local fruit stand by special order only, in season. They come in 5 pound tubs, and I have always used 10 pounds for 5 gallons. Maybe it’s the liquid that is present, but the cherry flavor has a different character than from the dried fruit. Not exactly more intense, but richer, fuller.
I have done a couple beers with pan-fried dried cherries deglazed with wort that I really like. I did one at a club group brew a few years ago. The cherry aroma while they were in the pan was so rich and intense that several women present were ready to fall in love with me (my wife was present, as were their husbands, so it was all good).
Hm, there seems to be a consensus growing amongst the personae in my head that it would be kind of silly to import American tart cherry puree into Belgium. Also, no dried cherries coated with oil. So instead we are thinking of using fresh Belgian cherries: make the base beer, add brett, funk, critters etc., let it do its thing for a year, add fresh cherries in the summer of next year, wait another 3 months or so, then bottle.
Great idea. What gravity? Because if you want it to be like a 1.050 beer, keep in mind that the fruit might not be that high. On beers that I fruit I overshoot my intended overall gravity knowing that I’ll get a little dilution from the fruit. Also another bonus of using puree that comes with a known gravity. Easier to plan out.
1.065, fermented with Westmalle yeast. Adding fresh cherries should not make a lot of difference to alcohol content. I think less than 0.5% ABV (formula in Mike Tonsmeire’s book). I think we should aim for at least 250 grams of cherries per liter (in the Imperial system that’s 0.092 cups per cubic inch).
Also, no dried cherries coated with oil. So instead we are thinking of using fresh Belgian cherries: make the base beer, add brett, funk, critters etc., let it do its thing for a year, add fresh cherries in the summer of next year, wait another 3 months or so, then bottle.