Cherry Stout
Thursday I brewed another Papazian recipe for Cherry Stout. I was given 3 gallons of cherries by my sister in law (thanks, Karyn!), but, for some reason, felt the need to pick up a few more. So, after the stout I will be brewing another Papazian recipe, Cherries in the Snow.
Started out with the mash, some roasted barley, black patent, and crystal malt. Sparged the grains and proceeded to add the malt extract. Now, I had measured out all the cherries by weight, and figured I had enough to increase the batch size to 6 gallons. A little math, and I figured out how to increase my malt extracts while keeping it the most economical. The most economical called for 7lbs of dark malt extract syrup and 3lbs of dark malt extract powder (my original math had the dry malt extract at 2.3lbs, but why let .7lbs of malt extract just sit around?)
The wort was to the top of my brewpot after the malt addition, so I had to boil it down for about 2 hours before adding my boiling hops. After the hour long boil I removed the pot from the stove and added the crushed cherries. Crushing the cherries proved to be a chore, as the cherries my sister in law gave me were frozen and resistant to crushing, so I had to do each cherry by hand. I added these to the brewpot and some additional water to cool it off to around 165 degrees and left them there for 15 minutes to pasteurize the cherries. I then proceeded to pour the whole lot into my fermentation vessel to cool off. Shortly after doing this, however, I realized I had forgot to throw in the aroma hops. Oops! I added them at this point, knowing that none of this brew is getting filtered anytime soon.
Friday morning I aerated the beer, took the initial gravity, and pitched the yeast. Initial gravity was 1.074. Highest initial gravity I’ve ever brewed. The hop pellets and the cherry chunks no doubt added to the high initial gravity.
Today I sit back and am listening contently to the most aggressive fermentation of any batch of beer I have ever brewed. This one will knock your socks off when I’m done with it. Wednesday I plan on using my strainer to skim as much stuff out of the beer as possible, then syphon and rack it into another fermenter, leaving behind the cherries. Once fermentation is done, I bottle it. Should be a nice, hearty, strong and sweet beer.
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