My wife has started taking tart cherry juice for joint pain. I have tasted it and think it might be a great cherry flavoring to brew something similar to Founders Cerise, which she loves. Anyone have an all-grain recipe that successfully uses tart cherry juice concentrate?
I added a quart to 5gal of hard cider and liked it.
Do you have a link to the juice she is using?
I usually use the whole fruit and not just juice. I’ve made a mead and a Flanders red using it. I’m interested in trying the concentrate though, since the season for the fruit is not that long.
This is what I used.
http://www.kingorchards.com/store.htm?category=Cherry%20Juice%20Concentrate
I found it locally in Delaware, so they do distribute. A few places online sell it too.
I have used it mead to flavor and back sweeten once the mead was stabilized.
It does have some tartness, and a lot of sugar. Would be an interesting experiment.
Edit - I do use it for the joints, it does seem to help my knees if I drink it everyday.
I imagine that concentrate has sugar added, but I can’t find any label info (other than nutritional) on the website. I don’t suppose you have a bottle laying around?
I think I might want large quantities than 1 qt though. I’m thinking a bucket ;D
Tom,
There is a company over here that makes their own concentrate. I’ve used it in one beer before, but never having used another concentrate I’m not sure how it compares. Though it is a bit cheaper (in bulk) and being in state shipping should be cheaper. When I talked to the farm owner at the market it never occurred to me to ask about getting buckets/drums of it.
I don’t have the bottle, but the only reason I shelled out $20 for a quart was because it only listed cherry juice in the ingredients.
Awesome, thanks. Local sounds great. I got my fresh cherries from Tonnemaker Hill Farm this past year, and I’ll probably do it again next season. I sent an email to tasteatreat to see if they add anything, do larger quantities, and have fresh cherries in season.
I’ve used tart cherry juice with fair success. I’d say expect to use more than you think you will because the flavor will be less obvious once all the sugar in the concentrate gets eaten. So for that reason I would either look for a local source or at least something you can buy without having to pay for shipping online if you end up needing to buy more than your initial purchase.
I heard back from tasteatreat.com - they don’t add anything, it is just concentrated juice, larger quantities are a special order, and they have fresh cherries in season. Great find, thanks again.
For my kriek, I found tart cherry juice at Whole Foods.
The raw ingredient tastes AWESOME and so does the beer.
Saves on shipping if you have one near by.
Just had my cherry juice for the day. The bottle of concentrate had the company, which is from Michigan, and below that in the fine print “product of Turkey”. They had to find the tart cherries somewhere. Now I know one of the wheres.
I’ve used cherry juice for bottle priming with good results. I tried it out on a gallon of American Wheat. I calculated the amount of juice I’d need my measuring the specific gravity of the juice and assumed that anything over 1.000 was fermentable sugar, then figured out how much I’d need to add to get what would be the equivalent amount of sugar I’d normally use for bottling. It ended up adding a very nice color and a subtle cherry note in the aftertaste.
I also had two of those bottles break on me, but I don’t know if that was due to them being bottle bombs or whether they broke when moving the box around that I use to sequester bottles while being conditioned. To be safe, I assumed they were grenades and I put the rest of the cherry-primed bottles in a cold fridge.
Instead of measuring the gravity, just look at the nutrition label which will tell you grams of sugar per serving. 28.35 grams = 1 oz. Divide priming sugar needed by sugar per serving to get the number of servings to add for priming.
yeesh - I’ll check the bottle I have left over. I want to make sure my cherries are AT LEAST from this country, hopefully from the midwest. Thanks for the heads up!
good luck! the midwest was hit hard by the weather this year and the cherry crop was very nearly wiped out. maybe find some from the pacific northwest though.
Well, sure … if you want to do it the easy way… 
Michigan is the #1 producer of culinary (tart) cherries. The crop was 3% of last years, so good luck on finding domestic. I will use a concentrate made from imported cherries if I have to. Poland was another place they were looking at for importing tart cherries.
Edit - the company that is on the label is in the heart of the cherry growing region of Michigan, so they had to do something. Such is agriculture.
Washington had a bumper crop, but then we don’t grow as many so it’s not like it would make up for the losses in Michigan.