Okay folks, how about a recipe for Cherry Beer?
My first pass suggestion is to keep it simple on the "beer" side because the "cherry" side will take some work. So for a 21 litre batch:
Ingredients
o 5kg of wild cherries with stones.
o 3kg of Pale LME.
o 1kg of Brewing Sugar.
o 25gm of Citra Pellets.
o 22gm of Munitions Gervin Ale GV-12 Yeast
Method
o Rinse cherries in cold water to remove any contaminants. (e.g. bird ****!)
o Add cherries with sufficient water to cover and boil for 30 minutes.
o Mash the cherries with a potato masher.
o Separate the liquid and cherry pulp from the stones by means of a sieve and great patience.
o Put the liquid pulp in a clean bowl and return the stones to the pan.
o Add more water to cover the stones and boil for 15 minutes.
o Stir vigorously to knock more pulp off the stones then strain the stones out with a sieve .
o Add the first batch of cherry pulp to the water in the boiler.
o Add the 3kg of LME and stir to dissolve.
o Add the 1kg of Brewing Sugar and stir to dissolve.
o Add water to bring the level up to 10 litres.
o Bring to the boil, add the 25g of Citra pellets in a hop bag and boil for 20 minutes.
o At the end of 20 minutes lift out the hop bag (squeezing out as much juice as possible) and transfer the wort to the FV.
o Top up the FV to 21 litres with cold water.
o Allow to cool and pitch the yeast at 20 degrees
o Install an air-lock and ferment at 18 degrees.
Notes:
Brewers Friend Recipe gives this brew as ...
o OG 1.054
o FG 1.013
o ABV 5.50%
o IBU: 20.91
o SRM: 4.36
...
without the addition of the cherry pulp!
From eating a number of the local wild cherries (especially the black or dark red ones) I would expect them to colour the brew from a very pale "blonde" to a more robust red, give a quite tart cherry flavour and add some (but not a lot) fermentable sugars to bring the ABV to +/-7%.
So, what does anyone else think?
Is it ... :thumb:
... or ... :whistle:
... or ...