Brew partner insisted on using cherries to help reach our target gravity, probably only a pound with pits, the pits of any particular concern when boiled? I heard cyanide will gas off, will it still?
First thing to come up in google: "Stone-fruit pits do have traces of cyanide, but boiling the pits renders the poison harmless. Even raw, they are safe in any quantity you would be likely to eat, even on an island with nothing but peach and cherry trees. So boil up the pits and enjoy!" -https://cookforgood.com/recipe/homemade-syrup/ So you're both right?
My question is why? No table sugar on hand? I'll assume it was a cherry beer though so it makes at least a little bit of sense. Still, expensive.
While it would certainly bother me, I'd probably just roll with 4 points over/under (it's actually like getting 70% efficiency vs 75%). Always good to have DME on hand and I like to take pre-boil gravities, so I can adjust earlier if needed (maybe you did this as you threw the cherries in the boil). So did you do some sort of calculation, how much did you add, and did it bring the gravity up to where you wanted it? Also curious what the beer is.
It's a recipe for English "old ale" racking to secondary today, we used mostly white sugar to reach 1.060
