New Mexican Red Chile

I've been thinking about doing a brown ale spiced with the flavors of New Mexican Chimayo Red Chile sauce: chimayo chiles, cinammon, cumin, (oregano?) and maybe even a touch of cocoa powder to bring out/highlight the sweetness (like in a classic mole poblano sauce).

I figure a brown, with it's nutty and sweet elements, would be a good foil for this: I guess it'd be a "warmer winter warmer"--my idea here is for the chile flavor to be a major flavor factor but not for this to be freakishly hot or anything.

Anyone experimented with this concept, or even tasted a beer anything like this (I haven't)?

I did a chipotle brown ale last summer, but all it had was chipotles added to the secondary. Honestly, it turned out more smoky than chili-esque. But it was good.

well i've had a lot of chile beers, but they just used straight chiles, not like replicating the ingredients of a sauce as you mentioned. i've also heard of a cumin beer, which my boss at the interior mexican restaurant i cook at raves about, but the brewer barely remembbers making it. i'm not sure i would add the spices in it, although the cocoa is a interesting idea. i feel as though the cumin and oregano would be flavors you wouldnt want in a beer. stick with just chiles, and if you make a darker style, cocoa might be a interesting addition. if you wanted to replicate a mole you could make a very nutty brown, and use the chocolate (or copious amounts of chocolate malt) and chiles, maybe just a touch of cinamon, although i'd reccomend an ancho rather than nm red. on a side note: while shopping for chiles in santa fe a while back (looking for some fresh chimayos as well as others), i discovered that true chimayo chiles (the ones actually grown in chimayo) don't really exist anymore as the farmers are making more moey doing other things with their land. she said that the variety is grown elsewhere but is not the same when not grown in the soils of chimayo. of course she may have been giving me the run around just cause she didn't have any, but she seemed honest about it. BTW most chile beers i've had tend to be red/amber ales.

Yeah--oregano, probably not. Cumin--I'm not sure about that one.

I'm not a big fan of cinammon, generally, but I do think it's essential to the flavor of a great red chile sauce. Possibly because it offsets the bitterness of the chile (not sure about that).

I guess there's only one way to find out! Seems like this would be the perfect beer to drink several of while roasting fresh chiles in September or October.

chile roasts in Kansas---awesome! i love the smell of chiles roasting in the farmers market during the fall. youve convinced me to try a mole brown ale. i think the hardest part would be finding a good balance between everything. i think the nutty flavor, chile, and chocolate would be the most important flavors to hit on. but as anyone whose made mole from scratch knows, it's incredibly hard to strike the right balance of sweet/spicy. if you use cinamon, use just a touch as it can be an overpowering flavor in beer IMO.

When I lived in Seattle, I used to get 20 lbs or so of fresh green shipped in evey year.

We had a local store that always carried them here, but they've changed hand, so I may need to go back to mail-order (or maybe just plan a road trip, which would be much more fun).

On roasting day, I pull out the biggest, most perfectly intact ones for Rellenos, then freeze the rest. It's always one of the major beer drinking days of the year.