Sour Cherry Stout

My Uncle got a hold of me and said he could get a big full of fresh tart cherries if I could make something interesting with them. Who turns down an interesting ingredient to brew with when its that fresh?

Ive never made a Cherry Stout so I decided to take my base for a Breakfast Stout that I make remove the coffee and chocolate and replace with the cherries.

Unfortunately I was mistakenly looking at a different recipe printout and sparged my grain bag for an extra gallon of wort. I boiled 30 minutes longer and at a higher setting on my PID than I normally do to get the required amount of finished product. Only missed the OG by .03 so Ill take it. I plan on letting it ferment for a month then rack off the trub and on the cherries for another month.

It was also my first time using a hop sock to contain the hops during the boil.  Till then I had used the Blichmann hop blocker.  While it worked it was a pain with the bag I use for grains.  The sock seemed to work fine, keep all the hops out of the fermenter just worried about the hop utilization.

Hop Sock

5 Gallon batch boiling up to the top of a 15 gallon kettle.

Mash Temps holding steady

All ready for the yeast to start working.

Cherry Stout

Recipe Specifics
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Batch Size (Gal): 5.50
Total Grain (Lbs): 18.13
Anticipated OG: 1.083
Anticipated SRM: 41
Anticipated IBU: 40
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70 %
Wort Boil Time: 60 minutes

Grain
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77.2% - 14 lbs Pale Ale Malt
7.6% - 1.25 lbs Oatmeal
5.5% - 1 lbs Coffee Malt
4.1% - .75 lbs Roasted Barley
3.1% - 9 oz Debittered Black Malt
2.4% - 7 oz Crystal 120

Hops
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1 oz Calyspo ( 12.8AA ) Boiled for 60 min

.5 oz Mt Hood ( 6AA ) Boiled for 30 min

.5 oz Mt Hood ( 6AA ) Boiled for 5 min

Extras
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0.50 Whirlfloc @ 10 min.
5 lbs Wild tart cherries with pits added in the secondary for 1 month

Yeast
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WLP862 Cry Havoc - from yeast slant to 2000ml starter

Mash Schedule
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Sacch Rest 60 min @ 156

Mash Out 10 mins @ 168

Notes
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8-26-13 - Mistakenly looked at the wrong print out of the recipe and thought I needed more wort post mash than I really did. So I rinsed my BIAB until I got 8.5 gallons when in reality I only needed 7 gallons. I was looking at the recipe for a lambic that called for a 2 hour boil rather than 1 hr boil. I boiled for 90 Min's and at a higher setting to get down to 6 gallons post boil. OG was 1.080 so not bad considering the confusion. Sat the carboy in the basement at 68F.


8-27-13 - Airlock was bubbling quite quickly and the wort was moving around nicely but no krausen. I noticed the temp had ramped to 74F so I put it in my fridge at 60F.

9-12-13 - Transferred 5 gallons of the stout onto 5 lbs of sour cherries. Adding Fruit