Trying Out A New Recipe - Need Some Advice

Wow, 40lbs of cherries for a 5gal batch... and 6lbs of lactose. yikes!

We actually used an organic black cherry concentrate for ours. We initially thought about using actually cherries but then we calculated the cost. Pricey! The concentrate we used gave a deep flavorful back cherry flavor which is what we wanted. This stout didn't have any cocoa in it, but we used a good amount of chocolate malt so it gave us a slight chocolate flavor/aroma in the base beer. We only used 1lb of lactose for the 5gal batch.

Alright try something like this:

og 1.060

IBU:20

English LME 7.2lb

Lactose 1lb

maltodextrin .5lb (increase body, cherries will reduce body) 

steeping

Black patent 1lb

crystal 80 1lb

crystal 40 1lb

Pale chocolate .5

Hops

Magnum or horizon if you are buying or really anything else you have laying around for 60 min to get you 20ibu

Yeast WLP 006 or 1099

For the cherries, if your going to go with frozen use 10lb. They are going to need to be pasteurized before adding them to the fermentor. This will involve throwing them in a pot of water and bringing them up to a boil for 5 min. I would add them twice, 5lb in primary at 8 days or after it has slowed significantly and 5lb in secondary. Let it sit on secondary for 5-10 days, rack to tertiary  leave it on there for a month to make sure all the fructose from the cherries is fermented otherwise your bottles will be over carbonated or even explode (experience)

For the chocolate  before bottling, pull a measured sample of the beer into a graduated cylinder. Add 1ml at a time of some creme de cacao or some chocolate extract from the grocery store or homebrew store. (Coco is not going to work very well.) When you get the flavor you are looking for scale the volumes and add that much extract to the bottling bucket with the beer. You could also do it with cherry extract to pop the cherry flavor. Finally, if it still feels thin at that point get more maltodextrine and add it to the bottling bucket (make sure to dissolve it in a minimal amount of  boiling water)

Those are my thoughts.

-15min

-yes

-20ibu, use an ibu caculator! its probably pretty close to .5oz of 12aa @60min

If you are looking for tart cherries they are hard to find and expensive.  I purchased a couple of gallons from these guys this summer http://seedlingfruit.com/markets.html ......they were of excellent quality and they bring them to local farmers markets.  The only problem is that they are only selling 4 gal frozen buckets for $120 until next season.  They are so expensive because the cherry harvest last year was terrible.  Each gal is about 7.5 pounds of cherries ...im going to wait till next season to get any more.....little too rich for my blood

You are not mashing so your efficiency is completely based on water volumes. Just dilute with water to get it to where you want it. The total amount of unfermentable sugars did not change, just the water volume. You can add moe water in bottling, just boil it before hand. The only fermentable sugar you threw in was the 7lb of DME, (no of the other ingredients have or could become fermentable sugars) the same amount of fermentables from the DME will get eaten if your volume was 4 gallons or 6 gallons, doesn't matter.   Also, lactose has very little sweetness, all the sweetness in the beer is going to be from the crystal malts. The DME  should not leave much sweetness. When I wrote the recipe I was more worried about not enough sweetness as the sourness of cherries and the bitterness of the roast malt might be hard to balance. Also why the IBUs are relatively low. Finally, your not going to notice any difference in a 5 point gravity swing, even 10pts will only cause a slight variation in flavor.

Your biggest worry at this point is making sure that the fermentation completes fully. After peak fermentation at about 5 days I would move it to somewhere that the temp is a consistent 70 degrees (ie higher than the ferm room) and let it sit there for a month so that all activity finishes. The reason I usually wait until day 5 to throuw in the first set of cherriers is the fructose from the cherries is more easily fermentable than the maltose and maltotriose from the grain. Yeast can get lazy if you give them easier food to eat first (fructose, sucrose) and sometimes font finish off the malt sugars.

I second what James said...

In extract brewing you can add as much water after the boil as you want (as long as the water is sterile). I usually add water to top off the fermenter to about 4.5gal, then I mix it thoroughly and take a gravity reading. I add more water until I have the OG that I was expecting in the recipe. Works every time I do extract or partial mashes.

I also agree with adding the fruit either in secondary or maybe 5-7 days after pitching the yeast. The sugar in the fruit should be the dessert for the yeast, not the main course. You also lose some of the fruit flavors and most of the aromas in primary.

Finally, when using lactose do not take the gravity that is added to the wort from the lactose into account when calculating your fermentables. A beer with lactose will always have a higher OG than the same beer without, but both should attenuate pretty much the same if fermented under the same conditions.