Cherry Tripel Advice

[takeabiteopeach]

Hi all, just wanted some advice on a Cherry Tripel i'm making this weekend (25L).

The main question I have is, i'm going to add the cherries to the primary in nylon bags once most of the fermentation is complete (I could rack onto the cherries in a secondary but it seems a bit of a waste of time tbh) but i'm wondering how much of the sugars from the breakdown will contribute to the fermentation?

The ABV on my Tripel normally comes out at 9.1%, but I want to aim for around this again with the cherries, so I don't know whether to reduce the grist / candi crystals to compensate, maybe taking it down to 8.5%. Has anyone done this with Cherries before? I've not brewed beer with fruit before so i'm not sure on how much they contribute to the fermentation, if at all?

I'm aiming for 100g per L, so i've got 2.5Kg of Frozen Morello Cherries from Asda.

 

[Thorbz]

It should state the sugar content on the packaging. Add this as sugar into some brewing software with the rest of your recipe and it should give you a pretty good idea. By my calculations 2.5 Kg of frozen Asda Morello cherries gives you 287.5 g of sugar. You probably won't get 100% of the sugars extracted, but it should give you a decent idea.

 

[takeabiteopeach]

Ah thanks for this, I didn't think about calculating the sugar content based on what was on the packet!

Brewed my tripel yesterday and accidentally added 2L extra when sparging so it's about 27L now, but assuming I lose 1 or 2 to trub, should be ok.