Green Chile beer

Thanks GoBlue59. What did you do to sanitize your Anaheim peppers? I roasted mine until they were somewhat charred, and hot throughout. Other than that I did nothing to sanitize further, I thought that should do the trick. Curious what you did, specifically. Thanks. I’ll let you know how mine turned out.

BTW I had some beer at a festival a few years ago made by the Black Bridge Brewery in Kingman, AZ called Scorched Earth Ale…(strong ale with jalapenos, habaneros, and ghost peppers). The pepper flavor was very nice, and there was a moderate slow burn finish from the habaneros and ghost peppers). I may try to make a version of that, but I have no idea of proportions. If my current Roasted Anaheim Pepper Beer turns out well, I’ll try to replicate that Scorched Earth Ale by using equal proportions of roasted jalapenos, habaneros, and ghost peppers…totaling 600 grams altogether for 5 gallons of beer. Or then again I may change the ratios to keep from burning myself, haha.

This was a “clone” attempt of the green Chile beer from flatbranch brewpub in Columbia, MO (not a whole brewery, just a brewpub on a college campus).

I basically blanched the peppers. Just dropped them temporarily into boiling water to pasteurize them, then removed from the water after a few seconds.

I make a tincture. Use the Absolut Peppar to take it up a notch

OK I tried my Roasted Anaheim Chile Beer. It is really nice, with a strong initial roasted green Chile flavor, followed a few seconds later with a mild burn at the back of your throat. As a reminder, here is how I made this.

  1. Started with 2 Gallons Czech Pilsner in a secondary vessel in final weeks of lagering.
  2. Added roasted, coarsely chopped (8 ounces) of Anaheim Green Chilies in a cheesecloth bag. Removed stems only.
  3. Added a Saaz Hop Tea at the same time. I tasted my lagering beer and it did not have enough Saaz aroma and flavor. I steeped Saaz pellets at 170F for 45 minutes, French pressed it, cooled it and added it.
  4. Left the peppers in for two weeks, removed the bag, and bottled as usual with priming sugar.
  5. Tried the beer after 8 days in the bottle, could not wait. Carbonated nicely already, tasted very good.
    Mission accomplished, this is how I’ll do it in the future. I plan to add some other types of peppers.
2 Likes

After one week in the priming bottle this beer was nicely carbonated. Three weeks in the bottle was a different story; when I opened the bottle it gushed. I was careful about the amount of priming sugar so I don’t think that was the problem. One idea is that the Anaheim peppers imparted some sugar?? There was only 8 ounces of roasted peppers in 2 gallons of beer, but perhaps that was enough? Dunno, any ideas guys? The only other possibility is that I did not adequately stir the priming sugar into the beer before I bottled, and so some bottles might have more sugar than others. After I’ve opened all of the bottles I can make a more educated deduction.

I’m leaning towards option 2… I used more Anaheim peppers for less beer (I only made one gallon) and then some bottles sat for 4 weeks or so. Never had an issue

You left the peppers in the beer for 2 weeks so any sugar would have fermented out.
Chances are the priming sugar wasn’t mixed well enough.
The only other thing I could think of is amyloglucosidase from the peppers or hop tea. But my bet is the priming sugar.

One thing you can try is to pry the caps and let some CO2 out then recap.

Thanks Loopie_beer I will do just that, let out come CO2.

Did you calculate your priming sugar using the highest temperature the fermentor reached or the current temperature of the fermentor at bottling. I was corrected recently to use “highest temperature reached” and this has helped me hit my bottling pressure more consistently (Big TY to @denny and everybody here for this)

1 Like

Well to be honest I did not factor in fermenter temperature, I just went with the “rule of thumb” for adding priming sugar, depending on what type of sugar of course. I’ve done this dozens of times with no problems. In hindsight, I am 90% sure I did not stir the priming sugar into the beer adequately. Some of this batch of bottled beer gushes and some does not. In the past I have had none gush. But thanks for the feedback, this is something I had not considered before.