Experimental herbed beer recipe

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stfinder

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Ok guys, my girlfriend and I have been brewing for a few months now and we're planning an experimental beer to celebrate my brother's graduation from college.

Here's the general idea (get ready for it): it's a pale ale brewed with flaked rye, orange blossom honey, bay leaves, and rosemary.

Bay leaves are a member of the laurel family, which are traditionally used to make wreaths. We thought including them would be fitting in a Graduation Pale Ale (GPA, get it?).

Anyway, any feedback on the recipe? We brew 2.5 gallon batches partial mash BIAB and have been hitting efficiencies in the mid 60s.

Grain bill:
60% pale two row (2lb 13oz)
15% Munich 10L (11oz)
10% Flaked rye (8oz)
8% Aromatic (6oz)
7% Carapils (5oz)

1lb Light DME
0.75lb Orange blossom honey (late addition, last 5 minutes of boil)

Hops/other boil additions:
0.5oz Cascade at 60
0.5oz Cascade at 20
6 crushed fresh bay leaves at 15
6 crushed fresh bay leaves at 5
6 sprigs rosemary at 5

Yeast:
Safale US-05

Target OG 1.067 (yeah that's high for a "pale ale", but it's experimental and for celebrating with!)

Thoughts, suggestions?
Cheers and thanks for your input.
 
No idea, but I'm following your thread to hear what the experts chime in with. :)


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew
 
That looks a bit much on the herbs for that volume. I would guess yours would end up all rosemary tasting. My preference has become to make very strong herb tinctures and add them to taste after fermentation. The only exception to that is "dry hopping" with certain herbs (thyme works very well).
 
I judged a competition a few years ago where a "rosemary stout" was entered in the veg/spice category.

It tasted exactly like lamb roast.

I would caution against using too much in the way of spices, especially rosemary and bay leaves, as it is very strong and the recipe you have would not stand up well to such strong herbs.
 
Seems like way too much Bay leaf...I'd cut that significantly, maybe 1/2 a leaf for each addition.
 
Thanks for the advice. I looked at some other herbed beers people have reported on and have made the following changes:

0.5-1 oz (2 sprigs) rosemary late boil addition

"Dry herbing" with 0.25 oz bay leaves and 0.25 sage.

I'm planning on buying herbs tonight and seeing how they combine by odor alone. I may do some other experimenting this week before Saturday (brew day).

Thanks again for the input and I'll keep updating as the beer comes together.
 
I purchased the fresh herbs in 2/3 oz packages from a nearby grocery store.

The rosemary certainly has the most intense aroma. It is more sweet though that I expected and I can really see its aroma being a welcome addition to beer. It also exhibits some spiciness on the nose which is also a character that I think will meld nicely with this recipe.

The sage is the second strongest in terms of smells. It too has a somewhat sweet smell though it is also more earthy than the rosemary.

The bay leaves are easily the least potent in terms of aroma. They smell earthly, spicy, and a bit lemony despite having a weak aroma. Because we really want the bay character to come through, I think we'll increase the bay leaf amount to around 0.5oz when dryherbing.

Here's another spiced beer that I found here:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=440156

Looks like a very delicious beer with rosemary, parsley, thyme and sage added in secondary. He ended up using about 2oz of fresh herbs in secondary. Sounded to me like it might have gotten a bit intense so I'm think max 0.75oz dry herbs in secondary (since we make 2.5 gallon batches).

Also, I had read that rosemary takes on the scent of other spices and really wanted the rosemary to have its own part in the beer which is why I'm still planning on adding 1(?) sprig during the boil at 1 minute prior to flameout rather than in secondary like the gentleman in the link above.
 
It's brew day.

The grains are mashing now (single temp infusion, 152°F). I mash in a modified 5 gallon Igloo cooler from Home Depot with a ball valve spout attachment from Northern Brewer. The insulation on this puppy is pretty great, I only lose a few degrees in an hour. Still, I usually put a hoodie over the top to reduce heat loss from the uninsulated top of the cooler. It's very high tech. More updates to come as the brewing progresses.
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Just finished brewing.

Some stats:

End of mash temperature: 150°F
First wort volume: 7.1 qt
Sparge volume: 2.2 qt
Sparge water temperature: 168°F
First and second wort volume: 2.17gal
Temperature corrected pre boil SG: 1.050
Mash extraction efficiency: 65%
Post boil volume: 1.62gal
Temperature corrected post boil SG: 1.108
Final wort collected: 1.5gal
Top off water added: 1.0gal
OG: 1.065

Notes:
The amount of grain absorption was way smaller than I anticipated. I used 0.42 qt/lb to estimate absorption but with this batch it was closer to 0.14 qt/lb. I'm not sure why that was. In any case I didn't adjust the amount of sparge water because I wanted to make sure I was using enough (I batch sparge, sort of; I add the sparge water to the grains after draining the first wort then pull off some liquid and pour it back over the grains through a sieve). I ended up with 65% extraction efficiency which I was pleased with.

I was actually ok with having a larger boil volume because that would mean an increase in hop utilization and this beer being pretty high in alcohol content, I'm not complaining about the extra IBUs.

I soaked the rosemary in vodka before adding it to the boil. It ended up being about 0.2oz of rosemary, which I tossed in whole at 1 min remaining in the boil. Oh yeah and I also added 0.25 oz of lemon peel at 10 min.
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Woooweeee, 24 hours in and the beer is bubbling away. Yeast colonies have almost totally obscured the top of the beer and at least one bubble per second is being released from the airlock. When it's quiet, you can hear it chugging along! The scent coming off the airlock is rather orangey with a bit of spiciness too. Very pleasant. More updates to come!
 
Subscribed. I'd like to see how this turns out. I can see Rosemary adding some good/interesting flavors to the right beer. Cheers! :rockin:
 
I just checked the SG of the beer and it's down to 1.008. I was worried a bit this week as the (basically) only scent coming off the beer was the orange blossom honey. It's definitely balanced out at this point. My girlfriend and I are going camping until Monday so I'll transfer it then and add the herbs. I'm going to add a bit more rosemary in addition to the bay and sage. I didn't taste the beer so I can't report on how that's coming along, but I'll make sure to when I transfer and report the beer progress on that front.
 
Ok, I haven't posted an update for a while so here goes. I transferred to secondary on Monday and added the herbs. A bit over 2.25 gallons were transferred of the original 2.5 gallon volume. The herbs were soaked in cheap vodka before the beer was racked on top of them. I wasn't particularly keen on the scent of the sage so I stuck to just rosemary and bay leaves. I added 0.62 oz of bay and 0.23 oz of rosemary leaves. I've occasionally been taking a sniff at the fermentation lock here and there. Like the herbed Belgian ale I took pointers from, I haven't been getting much in terms of aroma from the herbs. I'm thinking I'll just let it sit an extra few days instead of adding more herbs. The color of the beer is beautiful, a burnt orange with a bit of haze (most likely from the rye). It's crisp tasting thanks to the rye as well but it sure had a kick to it. I don't know what kind of carbonation level I want to give it yet, I typically go for 1 oz corn sugar per gallon but this might be better a bit more effervescent. Hopefully the herbs will cut the alcohol taste too. I'll probably bottle sometime early next week to give it enough time to condition.

Oh here are some pictures from transferring

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