homebrewandbeer.com

Hi
Here goes my first post (after about 1 year of lurking)

I am quite partial to the odd stubby of Kriek so I thought I might try and knock one out.
Fairly simple idea:
Coopers Canadian Blonde kit
500g dex
500g ldme
1.5 KG frozen cherries
Saflager Yeast

I was planning to defrost the cherries and whizz them through the blender.
Boil Dex & ldme and pour into the fermenter on top of the cherries.
Wait for about 15 minutes.
Add the kit then top up with cold water to about 23 L.
Pitch yeast when it's cool enough.
Transfer to secondary after about 5 days.

Anyone got any advice. ( I have searched a bit and there a re plenty of ideas but no results)
Thanks

Looks Ok to me BadSeed. I havent brewed with fruit for some time but I thought I'd put a few small suggestions out there.
1 - Maybe think about backing off the Cherries to 1kg at most for your 1st attempt. In my experience 1kg should be noticable enough. & once you've added them you can't reduce them
2 - I believe that kriek is made by adding the cherries after fermentation is complete. This helps to retain more cherry flavour so I'm told. If you were to do this you'd then have to pastuerize the cherries before adding to secondary - which isn't as easy as adding them as your planning to do
3 - I'd be inclined to either ditch the Dextrose or replace it with more DME. The cherry's should give you some simple fermentables which will ferment right out. Malt in place of the dextrose will help to sweeten it up a little. It really depends on how dry you want it.

Thanks Chris
I think your right, I will stick in a Kg of LDME and keep the dex for something else.
What about the yeast, I was using saflager just because I have some and the weather (in Perth) is ideal for it at the moment.
Looking forward to it though. Probably won't be much like the Kriek I have bought but a nice cherry beer will be ok now and then.

How do you get the sourness, is that something to do with the lambic yeast or some other part of the process which I am not aware of.

The sourness does come from the lactic fermentation of the lambic yeasts AFAIK. The idea of the fruit in lambics is to take the edge off the sourness. FWIW I recently did an apricot wheat beer using a Wyeast 3068 liquid yeast and it did come out a bit on the sour side.

I'd tend to go for an ale yeast for your brew. Maybe a US-05? I reckon the lager yeast will make it too dry.

timmy wrote:The sourness does come from the lactic fermentation of the lambic yeasts AFAIK. The idea of the fruit in lambics is to take the edge off the sourness.

I would assume that the majority of sourness does come from the spontainious ferment. & in some cases (peach lambics etc) the fruit addition is used to help lessen the sour quality. But I believe that, in the case of Kriek, sour varieties of cherries are used to further the sourness.
Although these days I believe that a lot of commercial krieks, along with some lambics, now have artifical sweetners added back after fermentation to sweeten them up. I had a RedBach (the, horrifically marketed, Rodenbach Kriek) awhile back & was dissapointed with the lack of sour.

Thanks for the help guys
I am going to put this down today, using the same method in the original post.

Coopers Blonde
1.5kg Cherries
1kg DME
Safale Yeast

I will have to get over the lack of sourness, which I believe is a combination of the type of cherries used and the lambic yeast.
I reckon it will be at least 3 months in the bottle, but should be worth the wait.
If it is too heavy on cherries then my wife will have to drink it

My Beligian mate reckons it's a girls drink anyway, and he seems to know a thing or 2 about beer.

If you want to cheat a bit to get sourness...

consider a cup of white vinegar when bulk priming.

Chris wrote:If you want to cheat a bit to get sourness...

consider a cup of white vinegar when bulk priming.

Just an idea. Anyone tried it?

Chris wrote:Just an idea. Anyone tried it?

I havent. Have you? If not where did the magical measurement of 1 cup come from?

Chris wrote:If you want to cheat a bit to get sourness...

consider a cup of white vinegar when bulk priming.

...then drink it straight out of the fermenter...

I put it down yesterday morning and it is bubbling away nicely now with a thick pink krausen, the fermenter is bright red and glowing like kryptonite.
Smells like unferemented beer and sweetly decaying fruit.

BadSeed wrote: I put it down yesterday morning and it is bubbling away nicely now with a thick pink krausen, the fermenter is bright red and glowing like kryptonite.
Smells like unferemented beer and sweetly decaying fruit.

Nice work BadSeed.

Inspired by your post I went out & picked up a Timmermans Kriek last night. & I hope yours turns out better than that was That's the second example I've recently had that's tasted artificial & chemically.

chris. wrote:

Nice work BadSeed.

Inspired by your post I went out & picked up a Timmermans Kriek last night. & I hope yours turns out better than that was That's the second example I've recently had that's tasted artificial & chemically.

Chris,

have you already tried the Liefmans kriek? I'm not sure if you can get it here in Australia, but my wife loves it. I'm not a big fan of fruit beers personally, but this one is quite drinkable.

Cheers,

Roel

No I havent. I believe that the International Beer Shop in Perth stock it though. Will keep an eye out for it.

I racked this to secondary yesterday.

Still feremnting nicely (bubbling every minute now)
The cherries sem to have gone only the skins were left in the yeast cake.

The brew is a nice deep red colour, although obviously still cloudy.
I had a little taste for scientific reasons and it was like you would expect (Half fermented, flat, 20 degrees) but it certainly wasn't foul.
The cherry taste was there but certainly not overpowering.
I reckon this is going to turn out well

Been reading Badseed's Kriek with interest as I intend to make one shortly for a Christmas Treat for the whole family.

I am considering using Coopers Canadian Blonde; 1kg BE2; 500gm Lactose and make up to 15 litres with Saflager S23, then rack onto the cherries, hopefully creating a sweeter, stronger dessert-style drink.

I have no experience whatsoever of Krieks, so is this a good or bad idea to make it a strong drink.

Cheers, Pete

I bottled this today. It was only 5.6%, I expected it to be stronger.
Lovely clear red colour.
Still tasting bitter with only a slight hint of cherry.
Should be a nice beer, but not nothing like a real kriek.

I think next time I will do what Peter Bradshaw says and Rack the beer onto the fruit to try to retain some more of the flavour.

I'm still pleased with the way it's tunred out, after a month or 2 in the bottle I'll let you know how it is.

Update

Looks good and tastes great. The head, although not big, stays all the way down.
Tastes very fruity but still dry. A lovely beer.
Nothing like Kriek, in fact it tastes nothing like cherries. I have put 10 away until xmas. I would have another go at this, but try to retain some of the cherry flavour.

Why doesn't the image display? Thank you

here ya go. quote my post to see the difference.