#6 Cherry Saison 06Apr09

Major sporting event? Must be time to brew. NCAA finals were tonight, although I can't say I paid much attention as it quickly became a blowout.

Titi Lilly, Matt, and Carolina were on hand to help pit about six pounds of frozen cherries. They needed to thaw just a bit to be able to pit them with two of the three cherry pitters.

I changed the procedure just a bit to save 15 minutes. I only boiled the first hops for 30 min, and then kept them in after adding the DME for a 15 min boil. I also forgot to add the standard 8 oz flaked oats to the mash. Bummer.

3lb Belgian Pilsner (Dingemans)
1lb Weyermann wheat
1lb Dingemans Carapils
4lb Briess light pilsen dry malt extract @ 15 min
1 oz E Kent Golding @ 45 min (5.0%, plug)
0.5 oz E Kent Golding @ 0 min (5.0%, plug)
0.5 oz Saaz @ 0 min (3.0%, plug)
6 lbs pitted cherries @ 2 min
WLP 568, fermented @ 80F (internal beer temp)
5.5 gallons total

Notes: Preheated mash tun with hot water. Strike water: 170F. Initial mash temp: ~155 F; final temp 150 F. I added the cherries (in the grain bag) to the wort at flame out. Active heating system in full force to maintain internal temp @ 80 F.

I forgot to take a gravity sample. The next evening the bubbler was going, but not very rapid yet. I opened up the bucket and interestingly, the bag of cherries was floating on top. Gravity was 1.053, which is pretty lousy, around 55% mash efficiency. If I assume I lost a couple of points to fermentation since it only started bubbling that day, I'm up to ~60% efficiency, which isn't so embarrasing. There are probably a couple more points locked up in the cherry sugars. I'm not looking for high alcohol content anyways, but it would be nice if I could get away with 1 lb less DME.

Next day bubbler is stopped. Bump up temp to 82 F. Gave the bucket a good swirl. Starts bubbling rapidly immediately, and for the rest of the night. What's up with that?

Fermentation was done after 6 days. Let set for a total of 2.5 weeks to maximize extraction of cherry flavors. Rack to secondary. Color is a deep orange-red. Gravity sample was 1.015. Tasted gravity sample- cherry flavor is subtle. Some definite tannins from the cherries on the finish. Lissette would have liked a much stronger cherry flavor. Probably need to suppliment with extract.