Pepper mead

brewsochist · 12-11-2011, 03:18 AM

I had an idea to do a pepper mead. Kinda want to try with habaneros. I'm not going to do this till next year. Just wanted some of your thoughts on the subject. Anyone tried it? Can anyone point me in the direction of good information? Thanks!

dummkauf · 12-11-2011, 04:49 AM

I made the habanero mead that's in the recipe section of this site(http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f80/habanero-capsicumel-60272/), and I have noticed that it seems to have gotten hotter with time. A few months after making it, it wasn't that spicy, a year later it left a nice burning after tasted in my mouth. I followed that recipe exactly except that I used 2 habanero's instead of 1. However, this recipe uses a ton of honey(I only did a 1 gal batch), and it's like a spicy dessert wine, and very thick, if I do this again I would definitely cut back on the honey.

I'd say just take a traditional mead and toss some habanero's in the primary and see what you get. 1 or 2 hab's per gallon would probably be safe.

Krausen89 · 12-11-2011, 05:10 AM

Ive made cyser and aged it on cayenne peppers. It was awesome. No special recipe. you could taste the apple andthe honey instantly and then a swift hotness which left you craving more. Must have the right palate for something like that...

brewsochist · 12-11-2011, 05:57 AM

Alright! That cyanne cyser sounds great. I just brewed three months ago a cyser. 15 lbs of honey five gal h2o and with cinnamon and then in the secondary two gallons of apple cyser and some apples and pears.

brewsochist · 12-11-2011, 05:57 AM

Thanks for the advice!

**fatbloke** · 12-11-2011, 08:30 AM

just be careful about how much chilli peppers are used and they type.

The bit in the chilli pepper fruit that makes it hot i.e. the capsaicin, is a fatty alkaloid, which is dissolved by alcohol, so the longer you leave the fruit in the batch, the higher the level of capsaicin that is dissolved.

The capsaicin is at it's highest level in the umbilical i.e. the white flesh/stringy part that connects the seeds to the outer flesh, next in the seeds and lowest in the actual outer flesh. So with that in mind, you can use whatever type you have or can obtain but still vary the amount of head that's incorporated into the batch.

Oh and as soaking chilli peppers in vodka is one of the methods that is used for extraction, you could just chop them, soak them in vodka for a couple of months and then strain out the fruit/pulp/etc and use the resulting tincture of chilli to flavour the batch to the desired level.