how to manage fermentation of fruit beer with cherry juice addition

Ingredients
1

I am doing a clone recipe of New Glarus Belgian Red. The recipe calls for primary fermentation for 4 weeks followed by the addition of 1 gallon of cherry juice into secondary then ferment to completion. The original has a very sweet (almost wine like) character to it from the cherries. My question is, to reproduce that sweet cherry flavor, I would assume I would not want to continue fermentation after the cherry juice is added into secondary? My initial thought was to cold crash at time of transfer to kill fermentation and then add cherry juice and lager it. However, this is not what the recipe calls for (and the recipe was highlighted in the July 2007 Zymurgy). Or would I be better off just transferring it to secondary, adding cherry juice, and letting it ferment to completion?

I have not done a fruit beer like this before so any input is appreciated!

2

That beer is pasteurized before the cherries ferment out so it retains a sweet cherry juice flavor. You definitely need to cut off fermentation completely before adding the cherry juice.

3

And don’t even think about bottle conditioning.

4

I have never tried this so can’t vouch for its efficacy, but maybe adding a small dosage of kmeta to stop yeast fermentation to maintain that residual sweetness from the cherry addition instead of pasteurizing which is tough to do on a homebrew level successfully?  Kind of like what wine makers do to inhibit wild yeast?

5

Regarding cherry. I’ve made beers with whole black Cherries, Oregon Fruit cherry puree, and most recently with Fastfruit tart cherry concentrate. Of the 3, cherry puree contributed almost no cherry flavor at 20lbs in a 6 gallon batch. The whole dark Cherries gave a hint of bing cherry in a quad. That was about 6 pounds in 6 gallons. The cherry concentrate, 1/2 gallon in 6 gallons, dominates the beer. That was in a roselare beer.

So, if i want dominant cherry flavor I’ll be using Fastfruit concentrate in the future. Maybe not so much next time, maybe same amount cuz I kind of like it that way.

In your beer, I would brew it to have a high residual sugar, high finishing gravity, if you want sweetness. Then use a type of fruit (whole, puree, or concentrate) and amount that will impart the cherry flavor you want. Let it ferment out properly, and get the residual sweetness from the base beer. This would result in a safe beer and probably same effect as going with chemistry or pasteurization.