Cherries and Flanders Red Style beer go together excellently. The base beer already has a cherry like character so the fruit just continues it in a direction it was already heading in. I've made three of these so far (read about 2016, 2017 and 2018) and have beer very satisfied with them.
From my recent Vertical tasting, performed on the beers along the big daddy of the sub-style (Redenbach Alexander), I would say the cherry character I've been getting (*using combos of Sour Cherries and Black Cherry juice) have produced strong cherry flavors which are superior to the commercial beer. I started out with 10 lbs of Sour Cherry in 2016, went up to 12 lbs along with a quart of Black Cherry Juice in 2017, and then up to 14 lbs of sour Cherries and 2 quarts of Black Cherry Juice in 2018. This year I'm going to increase up to 14 lbs of Sour Cherry (Montmorency variety like previous years) and 7 lbs of actual Black Cherry. It will be interesting to see how this compares to the others. I wasn't able to pick my own Cherries this year (mostly due to restricted picking schedules associated with COVID-19) so I'll be trying a different fruiting approach next time.
For the base beer, I will use my recent tasting of the 12 fermenters of Flanders Red I've brewed over the last 5 years, as a guide for building a blend. Given that the cherries are such a dominant piece of these beers you can get away with using more mildly flavored beers. I'll be using 4.5 gal of beer for this blend to make sure there is room for the cherries. This will be the following beers:
- Fermenter #1:
- Tasting Notes:
- Aroma: Fruity with and earthy and leathery character. Also has a kind of mineral aroma
- Appearance: Light reddish brown and a little murky
- Flavor: Lightly sour with a bit of fruity flavor. Slight earthy character. Get a bit of bready malt. Maybe a bit of mineral flavor as well
- Mouthfeel: Medium light bodied and pretty dry. Has a bit of prickliness on the back of the throat on a big swallow
- Overall: Flavors are pretty mild but nice. Has a fair amount of complexity
- Volume:
- 1 gal
- Fermenter #3:
- Tasting Notes:
- Aroma: Overripe fruit and earthy & leathery brett character
- Appearance: Brownish red and pretty clear
- Flavor: Light sourness. Has a bready malt character which hits in the beginning. Some fruit character comes next and earthy brett comes in the finish. Something like a bitterness in the finish although this couldn't be hops at this point. Also has a somewhat chocolate like character to it.
- Mouthfeel: Light bodied and pretty dry. A bit of acidity prickling but in way harsh
- Overall: It has some nice bold flavors and is an interesting and complex beer.
- Volume:
- 1 gal
- Fermenter #5:
- Tasting Notes:
- Aroma: Very musty with brett character of earth and leather dominating. Overripe fruit comes in in the background
- Appearance: Reddish brown and a little murky
- Flavor: Lightly sour Overripe fruit flavor hits up front followed by some bready malt. There is then a mild earthiness which rolls into the finish
- Mouthfeel: Light bodied and dry. Pretty smooth as far as these beers go - not much prickling
- Overall: This beer has some nice bold flavors and a fair amount of complexity
- Volume:
- 1 gal
- Fermenter #8:
- Tasting Notes:
- Aroma: Overripe fruit. I think I pick up some oak and wine in this one - vanilla. Get a bit of earthy character as well
- Appearance: Light brownish red. A little murky
- Flavor: Medium sourness. Has a bit of overripe fruit and a fairly substantial funky flavor which is a bit different than the others - not entirely pleasant
- Mouthfeel: Medium light bodied and pretty dry. Fairly smooth for one of these beers - not noticing much in the way of prickle
- Overall: Fairly boldly flavored. Has an interesting flavor profile but not super complex.
- Volume:
- 1 gal
- Fermenter #11:
- Tasting Notes:
- Aroma: Has a fruity and wine-like aroma. Smells pretty boozy as well.
- Appearance: Light brownish red and pretty clear
- Flavor: Medium sourness. Has a really unusual, funky, fruity flavor and a pretty firm bite in the finish - maybe the same as the boozy character in the aroma (it may be I've picked up some Acetone which would be a first for me). Get a sort of aged cheese character from it as well.
- Mouthfeel:Light bodied and dry. Has some prickles on the back of the throat.
- Overall: Very boldly flavored but a bit too rough around the edges on it's own. I think a little of this blended into a more mild beer could be a benefit
- Volume:
- 0.5 gal
Brewing Notes:
- 8/1/20:
- Poured the cherries into a bucket fermenter to thaw a bit a couple hrs before blending
- Blended the 5 beers in the volumes listed above in a separate bucket
- Added the beer into the fermenter with the cherries
- Found I'd pulled about a half gal more than I could fit in the bucket so I added this back to fermenter #11
- Setup the fermenter with a 3 piece airlock
- 8/15/20 - Lots of fermentation activity. Beer and foam has been forced out the airlock (which seems to happen every year).
- 6/21/21 - Finally bottled today. Added 2 lbs of Invert #3 and a pack of rehydrated wine yeast. Got 58 bottles. I'll monitor the carbonation of the bottles and bottle pasteurize to maintain some sweetness.
- 7/9/21 - The batch is nicely carbonated now. Bottle pasteurized in a hot water bath. I put the first round in at 180 F and heated for 30 min. The second batch I heated the water to 200 F and had quite a few bottles explode due to the heat. I ended the bottle pasteurization session with 45 bottles of beer - lesson learned for next time (hopefully it will be a while before I need to re-learn it).
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