Spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer Creme Brulee Stout

Made this for the wifey and everyone that's had it absolutely loves this beer. I'll keep this one on hand from now on. You get a good amount of vanilla, roast, caramel, and charred sugar without it being too sweet. I originally set out to do something like the southern tier creme brulee, but decided to make it less bitter and sweet. This is in no way a clone and is nothing like the ST, just inspired by it.

11.00 lb Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM) Grain 65.7%
1.50 lb Brown Malt (65.0 SRM) Grain 9%
1.00 lb Oats, Flaked (1.0 SRM) Grain 6%
8 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (80.0 SRM) Grain 3%
10 oz lb Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (120.0 SRM) Grain 3.7%
6 oz Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 2.2%
4oz Blakprinz (500.0 SRM) (or dehusked caraffa II) Grain 1.5%
4oz Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM) Grain 1.5%
3.00 oz Williamette [5.50%] (60 min) Hops 56.9 IBU

1.25 lb Milk Sugar (Lactose) (0.0 SRM) Sugar 7.5%
1tsp DAP
3 vanilla beans split and scraped

Mash grain at 154F. 60 min boil. Hops go in at 60.

Ferment at 68F until FG. In my case, it was 6 days and 1.017 before the lactose. Decide whether you want to secondary or add secondary ingredients into primary after hitting FG. I just add everything to primary and let time and gravity take care of things.

When it's time for secondary, split, scrape, and third the vanilla beans. Put em all in a mason jar with enough bourbon to soak and sanitize, about 2oz. Or just throw em in the fermenter if you aren't paranoid about an infection.

Put the lactose and DAP in a thick bottomed pot. Heat slowly until it turns a very dark brown, almost black. This will take a loooong time, but it will go from melting to black in a very short time! It will also not be sweet or very palatable on it's own when it's done and it will not look pretty, but that's ok. Just don't burn it. I wish I had taken pictures. I will in the next couple weeks when I remake this.

Once it cools, dump it in the fermenter along with the vanilla beans. I left it for about 10 days and it was ready for bottling.

Here's a somewhat old thread with some good info on caramelizing lactose. Clicky.

I tried dissolving the lactose and DAP in water before heating like you would with table sugar, but since it just solidified into a hard white mass when the water evaporated off. So from that experience, I would just dry caramelize it slowly.

I carbed it to 2.5vol. Surprisingly not too heavy even with all that lactose. Enjoy, it's an excellent beer. :cross:

What is DAP?

The only thing I know of as DAP is sealant. Pretty sure you don't want that in your beer

DAP is Diammonium phosphate. It is normally used as a yeast nutrient, but in this case, it is used to supply the nitrogen required for the maillard reactions. It should give it significantly more flavor. But I must admit, I haven't tried back to back caramelization with and without the DAP.

I did the lactose a bit different this time around. I did it in two batches. The first, I dry caramelized it. The second, I added a pint of water to it, covered it and caramelized it the way you'd do table sugar. With this method, don't stir and keep it covered. Checked on it every 5 mins until it was done.

With the dry caramelization, I got a much more prominent burnt sugar note, mainly because there was a lot more burnt lactose with that method.

I got a lot more brulee notes from the wet method vs the dry. Also it was much sweeter and more complex.

With both , I add a pint of water when it's done and cooled off a bit, then bring back to a boil to get it dissolved and pourable.

I had a very similar thought, use Southern Tier Creme Brûlée as a base but take it a little further, I used less dark malt and more C60/120 but the thought process was the same. While brewing I got distracted and forgot to add the lactose which I had planned on adding to the boil. I'm going to follow your caramelized lactose steps, seems like a no brainer to get those brûlée tastes. I'll post how it comes out in another couple weeks.

When you say the caramelizing takes a long time, what's a rough time frame? Is it an hour or is it five hours? I tried this but it was such a pain and made a mess of my pans. It took several hours to get past the solidified white blob. Is this normal?

I know this is a reallllly dumb question, but as a rookie brewer, I have a lot of them. When it says "Batch Size (Gallons): 6", is that the final measure or is that what I start with? This sounds like a great beer and I'm anxious to give it a shot.

Generally I assume most people mean beer into the fermentor. It very well could be beer into the keg/bottling bucket but most people only have about a half gallon or less of loss between fermentor and keg so worst case scenario your only off by a small amount if you choose fermentor.

1fast4door said:

When you say the caramelizing takes a long time, what's a rough time frame? Is it an hour or is it five hours? I tried this but it was such a pain and made a mess of my pans. It took several hours to get past the solidified white blob. Is this normal?

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caramelizing sugar can be a pain. As a chef i findadding the sugar with a splash of water and washìng down the sides with water can help. Crystallization happens quickly if the solution is tainted by impuriites or granules cooking quicker on the side of the pan. A smidge of corn syrup can prevent the crystallization process.

Ddubduder said:

I had a very similar thought, use Southern Tier Creme Brûlée as a base but take it a little further, I used less dark malt and more C60/120 but the thought process was the same. While brewing I got distracted and forgot to add the lactose which I had planned on adding to the boil. I'm going to follow your caramelized lactose steps, seems like a no brainer to get those brûlée tastes. I'll post how it comes out in another couple weeks.

Click to expand...

If you want something like the southern tier, you'll need a ton more crystal than what I'm using as well as a ton more vanilla. This is tame in comparison.

The lactose isn't very sweet. When you caramelize it, it adds character, but not really sweetness.

1fast4door said:

When you say the caramelizing takes a long time, what's a rough time frame? Is it an hour or is it five hours? I tried this but it was such a pain and made a mess of my pans. It took several hours to get past the solidified white blob. Is this normal?

Click to expand...

IIRC it took a couple hours. From experimenting, I found that adding water didn't help since the water evaporated and it crystallized before caramelization started.

ire2661 said:

I know this is a reallllly dumb question, but as a rookie brewer, I have a lot of them. When it says "Batch Size (Gallons): 6", is that the final measure or is that what I start with? This sounds like a great beer and I'm anxious to give it a shot.

Click to expand...

6 gallons going into the fermenter and generally around 5.5gal being bottled. If you keg, you'll end up with a little extra, probably enough for a couple swing top liter bottles full.

elsphinc said:

caramelizing sugar can be a pain. As a chef i findadding the sugar with a splash of water and washìng down the sides with water can help. Crystallization happens quickly if the solution is tainted by impuriites or granules cooking quicker on the side of the pan. A smidge of corn syrup can prevent the crystallization process.

Click to expand...

I found that the water didn't work so well. I've made tons of caramel as a baker and I always use water when caramelizing sugar. That's why I tried that the first attempt. The difference is that table sugar inverts during the heating process, whereas lactose just dissolves in the water. The water evaporates leaving behind a near solidified mass of lactose.

The corn syrup is worth a try. I've used it plenty of times with table sugar. I never considered it for this project. I'll give it a try next time.

seabass07 said:

If you want something like the southern tier, you'll need a ton more crystal than what I'm using as well as a ton more vanilla. This is tame in comparison.

The lactose isn't very sweet. When you caramelize it, it adds character, but not really sweetness.

Click to expand...

My initial start was ST CB but like you I planned on changing it a little. I used all British malt and added a little carafa 2 to darken it. My hope is to get more of a biscuity chocolate taste, think vanilla ice cream sandwich.

I caramelized the lactose last night, I added 1 cup to two pounds of lactose. The water was immediately absorbed by the lactose, there wasn't even enough to stir it, just like wet sand. I added another cup and there was a little too much. 1.5 cups might have worked better. Cookers at medium low for about 1.5 hours covered till the lactose was a deep dark amber (223 degrees) but the water never evaporated. At that point I took off the cover and cooked another 30-40 minutes. The temp increased to 226 and the lactose got much darker. A taste test showed I had the flavors I was looking for but unlike sugar the temp never got up to the 280 I was expecting, probably due to then slight water layer on the top.

I chilled, added a little more water, reheated, stirred and added it to the primary. At time of adding All bubble activity had stopped last night (about 80hrs in, 3.5 days ish). This morning I had bubbles again, so something must be fermentable. It also could just be the 1 tbsp of dap just getting the yeast to hit the original sugars harder. I'll post how it comes out.

One thing I did notice is the lactose didn't completely dissolve, it was still decently gritty while adding to the primary. Maybe I needed to stir more, after the initial water add, I didn't stir at all, maybe I should have.

I am in the process of making this beer. But I am having a hellava time with the lactose. I cooked it with water like some of you all said helped. Though I am finding that when I cool it down it started to get thick and gritty. Is this normal? Also, what temp should I let it cool down to before adding it? Thanks!

I noticed the same thing with mine however I added a little too much water so I assumed that was the reason. The top layer seemed to be a nice dark red almost black but under that was a chaulky white grit. The final beer turned out pretty good. Not much body as I would have hoped and the creme brûlée flavor is there but suddle. If I did it again I might try stirring it a little more.

This is exactly why I dry caramelized it the second time. I did it very slowly to prevent charring. The water all evaporated and I was left with a very hard layer of white gritty cement. It eventually melted, but I felt the water did not help. Covering it and not stirring might help. I know stirring will cause crystallization in table sugar during caramelization.

Next batch, I'm going to replace the c120 with 1lb of c60 for more of a light caramel flavor. The wife said she would prefer that.

Is there a way to get an extract recipe for this beer

Sent from my SPH-M950 using Home Brew mobile app

what would you say the benefit is over the caramelization of the lactose as opposed to a straight addition of lactose? just curious if it is worth the extra steps...

You won't get much flavor from non caramelized lactose. Its worth the steps if that's the flavor you're looking for.

I think you can do caramelized sugar. I spoke to a brewery rep and she said it is just vanilla beans and caramelized sugar. I questioned the lactose listed online and she still claims table sugar is the caramelized bit. YMMV.

I have had this planned as my next brew.

Let me know what you think if you make it. I might try half and half caramelized table sugar and lactose next time. Worth a try.

what would you say would be the characteristics that the caramelized lactose adds to the recipe? just trying to decide if i want to do something similar for a brew coming up.. you said it doesn't really add sweetness, but does it change the sweetness would be there with regular lactose alone to be just more caramelly (made up word)

Quick question on this old post. What type of yeast was used?

Oh I found it! Just couldn't see the line up on my phone app! Great recipe, I'm going to be brewing next week! Cheers.

This is probably a dumb question but where do you buy lactose. I'm having a hard time finding it.

Garmoni said:

This is probably a dumb question but where do you buy lactose. I'm having a hard time finding it.

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No dumb questions here. Any local brew store would have it. Also amazon or northernbrewer if you look online