i am considering making 15 gallons of rochefort in the venue of Herman Holtrop’s recipe
fermenting it with the saccromyces to completion then rack it into an oak cask
that had red wine last on the wood (recently). Then I was going to put in a good amount
of Brettanomyces Lambicus and some tart cherries to see what happened when you
get carried away with an already great beer… :-\
Umm, how close are you to the NW?
I am in central bfe Whyoming…why?
'cause I want a taste! Why else?
Please let your mind take you wherever you want to go. Sounds fantastic. Do it!
It sounds great, although it will probably take one hell of a lot of cherries, and you have to push them all through that little tiny bunghole with a stick or something. Hopefully you have one or two trees and can dedicate the entire crop for a year or two, or you can order 30-40lbs from hops/cherries direct. I might age the beer in oak with the brett and then rack 5 gallons onto cherries in a year or three. I have found organic tart cherry extract/syrup (from Michigan I think) that came in quart bottles and claimed to be the equivalent of “3 gallons of cherry juice”… I think they cost around $15 or more a bottle. I added one of these to a 5 gallon batch of lambic a few years back, along with a spice called mahlab, which is dried sour cherry pits (available from penzies spices and in ethnic markets with a middle eastern bent… Turkish, Iraqi, Iranian, Pakistani, maybe Greek but they probably call it something else). The overall effect was good (I would recommend the mahlab… it really adds a nutty thing that reminds me of good belgian cherry beers), but I felt like I would want to double the cherry in the next batch… for your 15 gallon barrel, that would be a $90 investment. I’m not sure how many cherries you can fit in a 15 gallon barrel, but I would try to fill it for the maximum effect and then put a finished beer on top of it for an extended ferment (near a floor drain).
Thanks Karl, you have just assisted me in devising my methodology for
this project. I desired to try some non brett beer from this barrel. I will harvest
a batch and replace it with a fresh batch and then put in the brett…a couple
months from now. Then when cherries come into season bring them into
the arena…should be july/aug for sour cherries. thanks for the tip on
that spice and I will try to procure some of that in the interim. So many options so little time…
:
Man you are making me drool every time I read about this project!
@ Karl. I had not heard of mahlab before. Though I have read somewhere IIRC that cherry pits are used to make an almond flavoring. Is that what mahlab tastes like?
Man this sounds fantastic.
Man, I’m already gone in my own mind! :P :o 
:o
The rochefort is finishing primary as I type…
Neither had I, and I’m 1/2 Iranian. I have learned that some spices have 2 names, though. What my mom calls, “Hell” (more like “Jel” in Spanish, actually, because it’s a throaty “H” sound - I call cardamom. Mahlab might have a number of different names, depending on the primary ethnicity of the Market you go to. On the west coast, those markets nearly always have a decidedly Persian (Iranian/Afghani) or South Asian (Indian/Pakistani/Bengladeshi) feel.
Well, there is also the consideration of translating from the original language(s) which can vary widely when adapting something from one language to another.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahlab
See link above for wiki discription. I thought it added nice almondy…nuttiness, and everything I read was that the lambic makers used whole cherries with pits, and it was the easiest way for me to use the concentrated juice and still get the pits.
On the record, The rochefort is in the oak! That was a job and
a learning experience. Lots of clean up now.
Let the Solera Roll! 8)
I just got 1/2 # of Mahlab shipped to my addy for $20.00 thought that was a fair price.
Sounds like such a delicious addition…almond…cherry…mmmmmmm…going in the solera.
A friend here uses 2# of cherries per gallon of kriek.
did the cherry pits come whole or ground? I have a 5 gal barrle that I use for souring beers. This sounds like a great project. I wish I have a 15 gallon one. Where did you get yours?
Richie
resto3,
I was advised to get the mahlab “whole” NOT ground because it looses flavor rapidly
after grinding. I thought It would be no problem to put the whole seeds thru the
grain mill…Then I was gonna give em a little bath in some everclear just to be careful…
I got my oak cask from Vadai Wine
http://www.vadaiwinebarrels.com/
And I highly recommend them.
Update,
Today I harvested 5 gallons of beer from Solera that has been in the oak about a month.
Here is the SpGr at this point…1.011 To my read…
Added 1/2 lb of Mahleb AND almost 5 gallons of Sour Pie Cherries back to the barrel
along with 2 packages of Wyeast Lambicus and the dregs from a couple bottles of
Avery Depucleuse (sp).
by the way, the Monster 2 roller Malt mill handled the Mahleb nicely…then I put it all in a quart mason jar
and wet it down with everclear just to reduce the microbe presence from the cherry seeds.
Today I topped up the Cask with some rochefort I made just for that purpose.
I have a couple airlocks in the bung and have everclear as the liquid in them.
Got home today and man did I ever get it topped off, the “s” bubblers were full
almost overflowing so I got a lil too much in the thing…I opened it up and pulled
a few sanitized wine thief draws out of the mix and snuck a taste…
I gotta tell you this is headed down a good direction for an interesting beer.
That maleb is a little overpowering now, but I think it will mellow as the brett
works. The cherries have started to get a little white pellicle appearance.
I get maleb up front on the palate, followed by cherry, and finish is like beer mixed
with maleb and cherry…the aroma is maleb. The finish is long and starting to sour already,
but the maleb balances the sourness in a nice way and it definately lends a neat aroma.
so it is like a 3 stranded braid of flavors and aroma. a tastebud olfactory carnival.
I await the 4th strand to manefest and that will be the oakiness in time, time, time.
Here is that beer in my glass cold…it is backlit and clear, the haze is condensate.
Taste is great. Hope it gets better with the addition of cherries…(currently fermenting away)
Anyone know if the cherries will be consumed by the bugs?
Brew on…Brew on… 8)
Looks damn tasty. And yeah, the bugs will eat the cherries. I’ve heard if you leave them in long enough there will be nothing left but the pits.