Recently had a agave ale. It was really light and good and tasted a bit like the aftertaste of a good tequila. Has anyone ever made one of these? I’m assuming that you would just add it like honey, in the secondary to keep the blue agave flavor. Any suggestions?
That’s how I would do it (adding to secondary). I think you would want at least a couple lbs of agave syrup to have any flavor impact and a half-gallon might be better.
I used 1 lb of it in a tripel and it dried the beer out the way table sugar does but did not really add much character.
Was there much residual sweetness? Would the yeast become active again in the secondary with the introduction of the new source of sugar?
No. This ale had no residual sweetness at all. A very perplexing question.
[quote=“steinbrau”]No. This ale had no residual sweetness at all. A very perplexing question.[/quote]There shouldn’t be any sweetness left from the agave unless you add more than 50% of the fermentables in syrup - my braggot is 50+% honey and it’s dry as can be with only a little residual honey “sweetness” in the flavor.
I would also suggest soaking some oak chips in nice tequila. I have done this with an english bitter. It was fantastic. One of my favorites. I’ve thought about taking that one tep further with some agave. So many beers, so little time.
