Festival Belgian Dubbel 'Kriek'

[achaddy]

So I am a fan of the Belgian brown kriek beers such as Kasteel Rouge, Petrus Aged Red or Bacchus Kriek.
These are all based on a Belgian brown beer aged with cherries. So I thought I would attempt to make my own using the Festival Belgian Dubbel kit, with the addition of Cherry Puree, added during the fermenting process.
I have no idea how this is going to turn out but I am hoping it will be somewhere in the region of the real thing. Fingers crossed!
I also substituted the 500gms of supplied dextrose with 500gms of Muntons Dark spray malt to attempt to make the best possible outcome. Probaly shouldn't have and concentrated on just seeing if I can make this work.

So far I have made the brew to the instructed 18ltrs. Today was day 5 so I have added dry hops as per instructions and 2KG of the Funkin Morello Cherry puree. This has added aprox 2 Ltrs as you might expect. The ingredients of the puree states that 10% is added sugar and 90% is fruit.
The starting SG was 1.065, before adding the puree it was at 1.017. After adding it went back up to 1.025.
I have the FV in a brew fridge and for 2 days the Wort temp was 22deg but I lowered it down to 20 as I thought this may be a little too high. (First time i have used the brew fridge).

I am now thinking that about another week to get to FG and then cold crash for a couple of days before bottling.

Any thoughts or advice happily received. I am quite new to brewing and only done kits so far.

 

[achaddy]

So I am now at day 8 of the brew and it appears it may have stopped. PILL is reading a steady SG of 1.012 for the last 24hrs. The kit instructions suggest the FG should be in the region of 1.006. However, I have added fruit puree so would this affect the expected FG level?
The Wort Temp has been reading a reasonably constant 20.5C so I have upped the temp of the fermentation Chamber by 2.0C to just see if I can squeeze the last bit of fermentation out of the yeast.
If not then I will lower the temp right down with a view to bottle over the weekend.
Or alternatively, leave it another week?

 

[clib]

The beers you are seeking to mimic are all mixed fermentation and probably all contain some form of sugar too. So using some sugar wouldn't be wrong, and using just the kit yeast won't achieve the sourness and complexity of a Petrus or Bacchus. You are not in a position to do that now but you should still get a nice beer. You could still add some sugar. You could maybe get a bottle of two of Orval, drink them and add the last inch of the bottle to your beer and leave it a month. That would add the Orval Brettanomyces which would work on the remaining sugars in the beer and provide additional flavours and a hint of sourness which would increase over time. What I've done a few times is split a beef after primary fermentation, bottled half or more, and added Brett to the rest in a smaller FV for a month before bottling that.

But no harm in just bottling what you've got.

 

[achaddy]

The beers you are seeking to mimic are all mixed fermentation and probably all contain some form of sugar too. So using some sugar wouldn't be wrong, and using just the kit yeast won't achieve the sourness and complexity of a Petrus or Bacchus. You are not in a position to do that now but you should still get a nice beer. You could still add some sugar. You could maybe get a bottle of two of Orval, drink them and add the last inch of the bottle to your beer and leave it a month. That would add the Orval Brettanomyces which would work on the remaining sugars in the beer and provide additional flavours and a hint of sourness which would increase over time. What I've done a few times is split a beef after primary fermentation, bottled half or more, and added Brett to the rest in a smaller FV for a month before bottling that.

But no harm in just bottling what you've got.

Thanks for your input.
I hadn't considered the sour element to the fermentation to be honest and assumed that would come with the cherries being on the sharp side. However, the suggestion of adding the yeast sidiment from a couple of Orval is an interesting idea. Been a while since I have had one but do remember them being quite sour. I even have a Orval glass in my collection for when I used to be able to get Belgian Beer direct from Belgian at a low price.
I guess on this occasion I will just bottle what I have as it would be nice to have them ready for xmas.
If I was to approach this again, what sort of yeast should I be looking at? And I am guessing plan for a much longer fermentation period.