Cherry Sour Blonde (2019)

This year I picked about 20 lbs of Sour (Montmorency) Cherries and about 15 lbs of Sweet (Black) Cherries from a local Pick-Your-Own Orchard (Highland Orchards).  Previously I had used Sour Cherries along with Cherry Juice on these beers.  The sour cherries have a light colored flesh so only the skin is contributing color - I didn't think last year's Cherry Sour Blonde got red enough.  I'm hoping the really dark fleshed Black Cherries will provide more color than the juice was able to.  I've decided this beer will use 11 lbs of sour cherries and 8 lbs of sweet cherry.  This is compared with about 11 lbs of sour cherries last year.

I'm going to choose 5 of my more mild Sour Blonde for the beer this year to let the Cherries be the star of the show.  I am using my recent tasting notes as the basis for the blending session.  I'm using a slightly larger bucket fermenter for this batch to give the fruit a bit more room.  This will be the following to make 5.5 gal of beer:

• Fermenter #1:
• Overview:
• Aged with Wyeast 3278 Belgian Lambic Blend
• Sitting on Toasted and Chardonnay soaked oak for the last year
• Mix of beers brewed with Pilsner Malt and Wheat
• Very lightly hopped beers
• Aged in a very full glass carboy with a vented silicon bung

• Tasting Notes:
• Aroma:  Earthy with a mineral character.  Slightly wine like aroma as well
• Appearance:  Light gold and slightly hazy
• Flavor:  Lightly sour with a lemon-like character.  Also get a bit of mineral flavor and bit of earthy funk
• Mouthfeel:  Light-medium bodied.  Fairly dry.  Pretty smooth - no real prickliness.
• Overall:  The flavors are pretty bold - particularly the lemon like sourness.  Not all that complex as the supporting flavors are fairly far in the background.
• Volume:
• 1.5 gal
• Fermenter #3:
• Overview:
• Aged with Wyeast 3278 Belgian Lambic Blend
• Sitting on a Toasted and Chardonnay soaked oak added from my 2018 Plain Sour Blonde Blend
• Mix of Pilsner and Flaked wheat malt
• Very lightly hopped
• Aged in glass carboy with 1 gal of head space

• Tasting Notes:
• Aroma:  Light, cheesy, funk and a bit of overripe fruit.  Also some mineral
• Appearance:  Straw colored and very clear
• Flavor:  Only the faintest sourness has developed.  Light malt flavor with a bit of funk.  It has a slight bitterness.
• Mouthfeel:  Light bodied and pretty dry.  Smooth drinking
• Overall:  Light flavors with little complexity
• Volume:
• 1.5 gal
• Fermenter #4:
• Overview:
• Aged with Wyeast 3278 Belgian Lambic Blend
• Mix of Pilsner and Flaked wheat malt
• Very lightly hopped
• Aged in glass carboy with 1 gal of head space

• Tasting Notes:
• Aroma:  Funky with a bit of fruit and an almost solvent like smell
• Appearance:  Straw colored and little murky
• Flavor:  Very slight sourness with a bit of fruit flavor.  Slight funk along with a bit of mineral
• Mouthfeel:  Light bodied.  Has a slight bit of sweetness.  Prickles the back of the throat
• Overall:  Mild in flavor without all that much complexity.  Rough drinking with the astringency.
• Volume:
• 0.5 gal
• Fermenter #5:
• Overview:
• Aged with ECY01 Bug Farm
• Mix of Pilsner and Raw Wheat malt bill
• Lightly hopped
• Aged in glass carboy with 1 gal of headspace

• Tasting Notes:
• Aroma: Fruity and wine-like with a bit of funk. Also get some malt coming through Pretty bold aroma
• Appearance: Light gold and very clear
• Flavor: Quite sour. Malty with a bit of fruit flavor and some earthy/leathery funk. Some bandaid like brett character comes through in the finish
• Mouthfeel: Light bodied and dry. Slight prickling in the back of the throat
• Overall: Bold flavors with a fair amount of complexity. A bit too sour on it's own but could be a very nice part of a blend with a milder beer
• Volume:
• 0.5 gal
• Fermenter #9:
• Overview:
• Aged with ECY 34 Dirty Dozen.  This is the second pitch
• Grainbill is a mix of Pilsner and Raw Wheat
• No hops in this batch
• Aged in a bucket fermenter with a vented silicone bung

• Tasting Notes:
• Aroma:  Slightly fruity (overripe) with a bit of brett funk.  Maybe smells a bit like a white wine.
• Appearance:  Light gold and pretty clear
• Flavor:  Lightly sour with a fruity flavor and a bit of earthy brett character.  It has a bit of bready malt in the finish.
• Mouthfeel:  Light and dry.  Pretty smooth drinking.  Leaves the mouth kind of sticky somehow (or maybe that's due to how many beers I've tasted so far).
• Overall:  Nice bold flavors with a nice level of sourness and complexity
• Volume:
• 1 gal

These five beers all tasted okay (there were no bad flavors) but they weren't all that exciting by themselves.  I think they'll go well together and I hope the cherries enhance the overall package.

I plan to give this beer about 4 months aging on the cherries prior to bottling.  I'm going to back-sweeten a bit and then bottle pasteurize to ensure a bit of sweetness remains.

Blending Notes:

• 9/22/19 - Blending Day:
• Added the five beers to the fermenter

• Added cherries
• While adding the cherries I discovered that there wasn't enough room with how much beer I had transferred.  I pulled off about 3/4 of a gal into a plastic jug which I'll drink now

• 11/16/19 - The cherry portion ferments pretty vigorously.  Quite a bit of beer gets pushed up the airlock

• 5/17/20 - Bottled today.  I've decided to backsweeten this beer and then bottle pasteurize to get a slightly sweeter finish.  I'm using 1.5 lbs of home made invert #2 (made with cane sugar and 1/4 tsp of citric acid) to do this.  Added a pack of rehydrated Red Star Premier Cuvee champagne yeast to carbonate.  Got 6.5 gal of beer which netted me 61 12 oz bottles.  The beer is dark red and has a very intense cherry flavor.  Not much of the beer character comes through at this point.  I'll check on the beer once or twice per week to gauge carbonation levels and then pasteurize.

• 5/26/20 - The beer has reached a good level of carbonation based on several samples.  Bottle pasteurized tonight in a 150 F water bath for 30 min
• 5/7/22 - Tasting Notes - This is a pretty boldly flavored fruit beer.  It has a pleasing and prevalent cherry character to it but it has a lot of the brett character that is able to cut through and give it a fairly distinct Lambic-style character.  It is pretty sour but in a way that compliments the acidic fruit and seems like it could be the natural tartness of the sour cherries.  I find it to be very drinkable and quite refreshing.