Happy (WARM) Friday all. I am going to brew an American Wheat from extract. I have a can (3 lbs.) of Vintner’s Sweet Cherry Puree, and was thinking of making a cherry wheat.
The kit recipe calls for 1oz. willamette for 60 minutes and 1oz. cascade 15 min before flame out. No grain steeping. Safeale US-05 dry yeast.
In order to get a light cherry flavor and compliment well, should I do anything different with the recipe, and when should the cherries be added (boil, primary, secondary)? As for right now, I think I just want to keep the recipe as is and add the whole can to secondary to let sit for 2-3 weeks. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.
Cherries should go to secondary in order to retain as much cherry flavor as possible. Several years ago I made the mistake of adding them to primary and there was barely any cherry flavor at the end.
I always add fruit after the bulk of fermentation is done. Your plan will work fine. The only issue is that the fruit will add some sugar and will bump the alcohol level a bit so you may want to reduce the extract a bit to compensate, but that’s not really a big issue.
