sweet potato stout

I'm wanting to brew up an imperial sweet potato stout for this winter. I've got everything planned how I'd like to do it except one thing: I'm not really sure how to deal with the sweet potatoes since I'm doing extract. I'm guessing I can treat them similar to pumpkins, and I've read anything from steeping the cooked vegetable with the grains at the beginning to leaving them in the boil and putting them into the primary fermenter.

I know the starches from the potato must be converted, so I'm thinking leave them in a grainbag throughout the entire boil process (I'm going to cook them in the oven for a while to try and caramelize them) then remove them before the wort goes in the fermenter.

Any recommendations on if I should just steep them or leave them in the boil or even go through the primary fermentation.

I have very limited experience and none with potatos but I have added some fruit to beers and if flavor is what you are going for not just added sugars I would say add it in secondary.

I have tried adding at boil, after flameout, in primary and in secondary. With fruits that is the progression from least to most in the flavor addition. The process of fermenting carries away most of the flavor in fruits as the fructose is fermented. I don't know what the sugars in sweet potatos are or how fermentable they are so I may be way off, but the later the addition the better would be my guess.

Also with fruits boiling the fruit causes pectin to form (mostly from the peel but its all over) which clouds and thickens (slightly) your beer. I again don't know if sweet potatos would do that as I have never tried to make sweet potato jelly.

Whatever you do, come back and tell us about it as specifically as you can.

-dylan.

I'm at work right now so I can't pull up the video, but I know that Steve Wilkes over at Basic Brewing did a sweet potato beer. I'm not sure if it's extract or all-grain, but it might be worth checking the video out and if there's no hints there, shoot him an email or hit up his facebook.


http://www.basicbrewing.com/index.php?page=november-26-2009-sweet-potato-pie-and-beer

I would think that you'd want to cut the potato into chunks or slices, brown them in the oven, then toss them in at some point during the boil but I can't say for sure. With all-grain I'd probably just throw them in the mash but that's not an option for you, so during the boil would probably (IMO) work best.

In any case, be sure to hit back with how it turns out! Too often people try interesting recipes like this and don't report back with results (good or bad, it helps others formulate their own recipes )

I've been wanting to do this myself, but all grain. My plan is to bake or grill the sweet potatoes until they are shriveled up. They are super sweet this way, so they should need very little, if any, conversion. That's just an opinion, of course. I was thinking of adding 1/2 to the mash and half into end of boil (mashed of course). How many lbs of potato, i'm not sure. I'd like to try a proven recipe, but I've had no luck finding any available examples. A few brewpubs I've visited advertised one, but never in stock.
Some good reading here:
http://brewery.org/library/Potato.html

bendavanza said:

I've been wanting to do this myself, but all grain. My plan is to bake or grill the sweet potatoes until they are shriveled up. They are super sweet this way, so they should need very little, if any, conversion. That's just an opinion, of course. I was thinking of adding 1/2 to the mash and half into end of boil (mashed of course). How many lbs of potato, i'm not sure. I'd like to try a proven recipe, but I've had no luck finding any available examples. A few brewpubs I've visited advertised one, but never in stock.
Some good reading here:
http://brewery.org/library/Potato.html

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I used about 7lbs in the mash. I have a friend that worked at Lazy Magnolia and he said they used canned sweet potato in the boil. I'm more partial to fresh things, so I went with the fresh potatoes, sliced them with the slicer on my food processor, then baked them for about an hour and a half. Then I mashed them up with some amalyse enzyme and held them at 140F for another hour before adding them to the partial mash.

The beer turned out pretty awesome, however I think I'm gonna do a lot less specialty grains because they seem to take over the flavor. And more sweet potatoes. Maybe 8-10lbs for a 5gal batch.

I wonder if 5 pounds or so of sweet potatoes thrown into my smoker next brisket I am making would be interesting thrown into a stout. Smoked sweet potatoes run through a cuisinart added for the last 10 of the boil?


-dylan.

I've never had smoked sweet potatoes but that sounds amazing. Definitely gonna try that this weekend and maybe add some to my next stout.

I used pumpkin in one of my recent beers and what i did was to take the 5 cans and empty them in a baking dish. I baked them at 350 for 30mins and then put them in a nylon sack and brought to a boil over an hour. I took the sack out and squeezed the juice out and then added the water to the pot the grain steeped in and added the extract and boiled like normal. The beer hasnt been bottled yet, so im not sure how it will turn out, but i imagine it will be good.

On the smoked potatoes, does the smokiness get past the skins?

pr0cess said:

I wonder if 5 pounds or so of sweet potatoes thrown into my smoker next brisket I am making would be interesting thrown into a stout. Smoked sweet potatoes run through a cuisinart added for the last 10 of the boil?


-dylan.

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Did you ever try this, and if so how much smoke flavor got into the beer?

i did a partial mash pumpkin ale in the past and used VERY coarse cracked grains and rice hulls for the sparge, worked like a charm...

If you use sweet potatoes in an extract batch, you will need to mash the potatoes at the correct temp to convert the starches. If you search this forum for "sweet potato" you'll find a paper giving the diastatic power of sweet potatoes. My batch turned out tasty, but still too starchy. (I used a crockpot to cook the shredded potatoes, 5lbs worth IIRC). I'm guessing if I would have held it at mash temperatures it would have converted better.

You may just want to buy some amylase enzyme to make it easy on yourself.


edit: here's the paper giving SP info: http://www.jbc.org/content/44/1/19.full.pdf

I brewed a partial mash pumpkin ale this fall that was AMAZING (better than any commercial version, and I've tried quite a few of them.). I cut the pumpkins into chunks and roasted them in the oven for an hour or so. Then I added them to my mash for an hour at ~150 degrees.

I'd probably do something similar with sweet potatoes.

bcgpete said:

I used about 7lbs in the mash. I have a friend that worked at Lazy Magnolia and he said they used canned sweet potato in the boil. I'm more partial to fresh things, so I went with the fresh potatoes, sliced them with the slicer on my food processor, then baked them for about an hour and a half. Then I mashed them up with some amalyse enzyme and held them at 140F for another hour before adding them to the partial mash.

The beer turned out pretty awesome, however I think I'm gonna do a lot less specialty grains because they seem to take over the flavor. And more sweet potatoes. Maybe 8-10lbs for a 5gal batch.

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I'm about to brew a sweet potato stout this weekend and still haven't decided how many pounds to add to the mash. I'm shooting for an OG of 1.062 with a stout around 6.3%. I've tried to keep the dark grains to a minimum so their flavor won't cover the sweet potato flavor completely. What was the ABV of your stout? I was thinking 8-10 pounds, but leaning closer to 8 just because it's my first time using a vegetable; I don't want the potato flavor to be too strong making it undrinkable. Any thoughts/suggestions?

Thanks!

I did 16 lbs for a 10 gal batch. My stout ended up being right at 11%. I think keeping the darker grains lower is a good idea. I did two different batches, the second with less intense grains, and it came out better. The sweet potatoes put in a great flavor, but I think if I do it again I will do more potato. I liked the effect that baking the potatoes had; I baked them until some were caramelizing on the edges and it gave a nice roasted/sweet flavor. It was nice to get that flavor from the potatoes instead of the malts. I doubt the potato flavor would be too strong with 10 lbs because sweet potatoes aren't near as starchy as white potatoes.

Hope that helps, and good luck!

Please share your recipe for the sweet potato stout, I would love to try this one!!

Great, thanks! I just bought 8 lbs. yesterday at the farmers market ($4!!!) and think that'll be good enough for the abv I'm going for. I'll let you how it turns out!