[brewmasternpb]

Hey BA'ers!  I'm doing an experimental procedure, and I thought I'd seek some critique.
A friend of mine has some great tasting cherries, I put about 2.5# in a Belgian wheat beer.  The smell coming from it is very appetizing.  Anyway, he brought me many more cherries today and I want to make a Cherry "pseudo wine".  I say Pseudo wine because I want to use some Belgian Ale yeast I have.  So here's what I'm going to do:
1) Mash cherries up with some blunt kitchen instrument (potato masher?)
2) Drain cherries utilizing sanitized strainer and/or nylon mesh bag.
3) Heat juice to "almost" boiling, so as to sanitize (I'm really not concerned if I get some beasties, I would appreciate a little sourness).
4)  Cool down in a cold water bath.
5)  Add to a 3 gallon carboy, add yeast.
6) ferment for about 3-4 weeks, and bottle (aging time will depend on my O.G.).

Any thoughts?

[beerocd]

I wouldn't do the boil, ferment the whole pulp, strain at the end of primary.

[brewmasternpb]

Very good.  Will the lack of a boil give me too much microflora?

[beerocd]

You said you wouldn't mind sour. 
You can hit it with K-metabisulfite.1/4tsp powder per 5 gallons.
If you're really scared, freezing could also be used to kill off the unwanted bacteria without changing the cherry juice.

Are you adding water/sugar to hit a specific gravity, or are you hoping to just ferment 100% juice?
Can you take a reading to see the sugar content of your juice before you start?

[richardt]

I'll throw out a dumb question:

If the skins of the cherries are intact, why not just soak the cherries in StarSan solution (1 oz in 5 gallons distilled H2O) for two minutes and strain out the cherries with a collander.  It should kill the bugs.

I just don't know if the phosporic acids can penetrate the skins.  If nobody has ever tried it, you could do a quick experiment with a handful of cherries first.

[pyrite]

If you're really scared, freezing could also be used to kill off the unwanted bacteria without changing the cherry juice.

While freezing decreases the rate of reactions and sometimes kills off some unwanted living organisms, it does not completely kill off all living organisms.

[sienabrewer]

If you're really scared, freezing could also be used to kill off the unwanted bacteria without changing the cherry juice.

While freezing decreases the rate of reactions and sometimes kills off some unwanted living organisms, it does not completely kill off all living organisms.

I'll second that.  Made a blackberry blonde for the lady.  Froze the berries and added to secondary and racked beer on top.  Beer going into the secondary tasted great.  Beer that is now bottled has a definite sourness from wild fermentation.  Those wild yeast went to town on my beer.  Oddly enough I like it.  Has a definite wild fermentation character that I enjoy.  Moral of the story is that freezing will not kill off all bacteria.  Perhaps make it dormant, but not dead.

[richardt]

More importantly....  what does the lady think?

[brewmasternpb]

Are you adding water/sugar to hit a specific gravity, or are you hoping to just ferment 100% juice?
Can you take a reading to see the sugar content of your juice before you start?

I think I'm just going to go with "just juice".  I will take a gravity reading first, and if it's sub-1.050 I'll add more sugar.

[sienabrewer]

More importantly....  what does the lady think?

It's not her cup of tea, but good thing I made only one case of it.