Looking for ideas starting with an extract kit. Pepper in primary? secondary? how many? technique? Any ideas welcome!
Did do a brew few months ago. With hot pepers. Did come out way awesome. They way i did. Took the peppers. Cut them in half. Did took the seeds out. Dont use the seeds. Only the peppers. Cut them in pieces. Toss them in vodka. And let them soak for ten days. Once ready. Toss everything in the second fermentor. I did do it three weeks before keg or bottle time
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I’ve made a jalapeño cream ale a couple times now. Get 6 peppers. Cut them in half & removed the seeds. Roasted them in the oven at 350 F till just before they started to brown. Three peppers were put into the last 15 min of boil. The other three were put in a mason jar with vodka. The peppers in the mason jar were then added to the secondary as you would “dry hop” saving the infused vodka and added 8 oz to the bottling bucket… Good pepper flavor with a mild amount of “heat”
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I thought a pepper beer would be a great idea. I used a blonde ale kit from my LHBS and added a habanero tincture made with 100 proof vodka. I tired a few different tinctures. One with jalapeno sliced with seeds, one with jalapeno without seeds, one with sliced habanero with seeds. I didn’t care for the pepper flavor from the jalapeno with and without seeds it was too green peppery and didn’t have the heat to balance it out. The habanero had the best pepper flavor in my opinion but had a crazy amount of heat. That is why I tried the habanero tincture in the secondary (the pepper and vodka). Turned out crazy hot, not too much that I couldn’t drink it but hot enough to not really want another one if you could finish it. I don’t think I would revisit a pepper beer but it was a fun experiment.
My suggestion would be to split up the base beer. I split the beer at secondary into a 3 gallon carboy and a couple 1 gallon jugs to experiment with. That way if it turns out bad you don’t have to choke them down or dump the whole batch.
Mine not extreme hot. Once you took a sip the after taste gave you. A little taste of mmmm yes nice taste. Had a brewer from holland over. He did like the beer lots
My 1st pepper beer was a test…prepared, boiled, & dry hopped as described above …when bottling time came I had 10 bottles of 5 different levels of the infused vodka added… put the entire 5 gallon batch in the bottling bucket. First 10 bottles were as is (no vodka added)…next 10 bottles were the equilvant of adding 2 oz of vodka per 5 gallons…and so on (4 oz…6 oz…8 oz). I was expecting to be somewhere in the middle, but ended up with not as wide a range in “heat” as I thought. The 8 oz version is what I settled on. Hint: the peppers will vary in heat/spice from season to season so weigh your peppers to get an amount (grams) to eliminate some variation.
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When adding flavors to beer…I am of the mind set of not wanting the flavor to be the predominate taste…I want it there, but in the background.
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In a 2 gallon batch, I put six chopped jalapeño peppers in a hop sack, seeds and all, for the two week fermentation. Gave a pepper taste with slight heat
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I have brewed a “Jalapeno Wheat” from the Wheat extract kit. I used 4.5 de-seeded jalapenos in 5 gallons. It had a nice “freshly sliced jalapeno” aroma and a little less in the flavor. It made a nice fresh summer beer with virtually no heat. I simply put the chunks of jalapeno in the fermenter and left them there for the whole time.
