Carrot Cake Belgian???

I was looking for a recipe to use some wyeast 1214 Belgian Abbey yeast and came across this:

http://hopville.com/recipe/462385/belgian-golden-strong-ale-recipes/takumis-carrot-cake-belgium

I did a quick search and came up with several mentions of people using carrot juice in secondary or even thinking about using shredded carrots in mash but I am curious if anyone has actually tried this?

Patirck,

I am working on a carrot cake recipe myself and was debating between fresh carrots or carrot juice. I am going to do a small 1lb brew of each this weekend of a simple, light, plain brew where I only add fresh carrots to one and carrot juice to the other to give a base line to taste the flavor of each. Which ever one works better, I will use it for the actual brew later in the spring. I have decided to add both to the secondary instead of the boil. I am happy to let you know my opinions in a few weeks.

That sounds great. Carrot juice in secondary is probably the best way to go. I tried a little experiment trying to mash shredded carrots and according to my hydrometer 1 pound of shredded carrots in 1 gallon of 151* water for an hour didn't extract any ferment-able sugars.

ive been wanting to do one myself, but looking for an extract kit because i dont do all grain batches yet

You could do this with an extract batch - just add carrot juice to the secondary. Not sure how it will turn out but there is one way to find out.

I make a beer that is half malt - half rye bread. I use a lb of six row (plus other grains) to help conversion. I just make the bread, turn it to crumbs in the food processor and add it to the mash.

You could do the same with real carrot cake.

Patirck said:

You could do this with an extract batch - just add carrot juice to the secondary. Not sure how it will turn out but there is one way to find out.

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What extract recipe would you use for this?? Any ideas?

SauceBoss said:

What extract recipe would you use for this?? Any ideas?

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I would start off with a belgian blonde recipe and cut back on say a half pound of the base extract (for a 5 gallon batch).

pjj2ba said:

I make a beer that is half malt - half rye bread. I use a lb of six row (plus other grains) to help conversion. I just make the bread, turn it to crumbs in the food processor and add it to the mash.

You could do the same with real carrot cake.

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So the unmalted bread will convert? I have heard of some kind of Russian beer that is made this way but never thought of using cake instead. I would be a bit afraid of the sweetness. How much bread do you use for what size batch?

Yes it will convert. The Russian "beer" is called Kvass, and is made only with bread, no malt. My version is half/half, using a loaf and a half of rye bread (homemade of course). The first time I did this I learned that the bread ferments very clean and neutral flavored so I upped the specialty grains in later versions. 5 gal batch

Did my 2 gallon plain 2 row beer yesterday with 1/2 oz of Liberty hops for the entire boil. Fermenting away and this weekend I will move to secondary, 1 gallon with 1 lb carrots, peeled, chopped, boiled; and 1 gallon with 1 cup 100% carrot juice, boiled.

The following is the recipe I am planning right now for the real thing:
7 lbs light LME
1 lb 2-Row
8 oz. crystal 60L
8 oz. Special roast
8 oz. Maltodextrine
1 lb flaked oats
8 oz raisins, put in blender with 1 cup wort then added to boil in final 5 min.
1 oz irish moss - 10 min.
1.5 cups spiced Makers Mark with vanilla beans, cinn sticks, nutmeg, allspice, 1/2 oz ginger added to secondary
5 lb. carrots, peeled, shredded, and boiled covered or 5 cups carrot juice, boiled and added to secondary
12 oz lactose added at bottling

pjj2ba said:

Yes it will convert. The Russian "beer" is called Kvass, and is made only with bread, no malt. My version is half/half, using a loaf and a half of rye bread (homemade of course). The first time I did this I learned that the bread ferments very clean and neutral flavored so I upped the specialty grains in later versions. 5 gal batch

Click to expand...

Sorry to the OP for hijacking this but hopefully this is still on topic..

So this is a pretty interesting idea, especially given that my wife is taking a cake decorating class and I have to eat a cake a week for the next 6 weeks. Would you add an entire cake for a 5 gallon batch? I was thinking of:

A carrot cake cut into 1" cubes
1 lb 6 row
4 lb belgian pils
1lb vienna
.5 lb carapils

Mash @152 for 90 min


For about 22 IBUs:
Styrian goldings @ 60 min
Saaz @ 30 min
Styrian goldings @ 5 min

Belgian abbey ale yeast (because I have it on hand)

In my bread beer, I added bread the equivalent to ~2.5 lbs of flour. I think two loaves contained about 12 cups of flour total. It is hard to judge by the cooked weight, as that will depend on how much water is cooked off. I'd get a weight of how much flour was used for the cake.

I'd first turn it into "crumb" cake. Smaller pieces will convert better. It hurts a little to take a cake (or just baked bread) and turn it into crumbs, but it must be done

If you brew this with an actual cake, I would love to hear about your results.

subscribing because this sounds delicious.

I am anxous to try this but I think the amount of cake has to be adjusted. Based on pjj2ba's bread beer I think the amount of cake has to be less than the amount of bread used...

I just did the math - a pound of flour is 4 cups sifted. So 2.5 pounds would be 10 cups. Each cake has 1.5 cups of flour and a cup of sugar which I'm told is a 1/2 pound. In order to get to 2.5 pounds of flour, I would have to add 7 carrot cakes to a 5 gallon batch. That sounds like a lot of cake! If each cake is 10 slices and a 5 gallon batch is 50 beers, that is roughly 1.5 slices per 12 oz serving of beer - diabetes, here I come!

I definitely want to give this a try in about two weeks. I think I'll need to figure out the volumes a bit. Based on the above math and my own (very large) gut, I think I'll try it with two cakes and leave out the pound of corn sugar that usually goes in a Belgian. I'll probably start with about 8 pounds of Belgian pils, 2 or 3 pounds of vienna, and a pound of carapils/dextrine as I am worried about the oil in the cake causing low head retention issues.

Worst case scenario, the gravity will be low and I'll learn for next time.

I'll up date in a few weeks when I brew.

sfrisby said:

Did my 2 gallon plain 2 row beer yesterday with 1/2 oz of Liberty hops for the entire boil. Fermenting away and this weekend I will move to secondary, 1 gallon with 1 lb carrots, peeled, chopped, boiled; and 1 gallon with 1 cup 100% carrot juice, boiled.

The following is the recipe I am planning right now for the real thing:
7 lbs light LME
1 lb 2-Row
8 oz. crystal 60L
8 oz. Special roast
8 oz. Maltodextrine
1 lb flaked oats
8 oz raisins, put in blender with 1 cup wort then added to boil in final 5 min.
1 oz irish moss - 10 min.
1.5 cups spiced Makers Mark with vanilla beans, cinn sticks, nutmeg, allspice, 1/2 oz ginger added to secondary
5 lb. carrots, peeled, shredded, and boiled covered or 5 cups carrot juice, boiled and added to secondary
12 oz lactose added at bottling

Click to expand...

I would love to know how this turns out. Interested in trying it as a partial mash recipe.

Sent from my iPhone using HB Talk

Tomorroe

sfrisby said:

Tomorroe

Click to expand...

Tomorrow is finally brew day. Look forward to sharing how it goes.

Subscribed

Mmmm carrot cake...you plan on putting icing in too right...?? I mean that IS the best part!!

Instead of head, I'm spreading icing on top of each pint that is pored.

Seriously, added maltodextrine in the boil and will do lactose at bottling to help provide a bit of sweetness to assist in that.

How's it coming along?

So I'm super interested in this recipe and just wanted to add some info that might help. My recipe for carrot cake is something I bake every year for my mom and it is the same recipe as the local craft bakery who is famous for this cake. It's seriously out of this world.

Question: what made you decide on belgian for the base beer? dryness or crisp yeast?

I'll list the main items that I think would be applicable to mashing / boiling (some is the same as OP):

Cake:
Vanilla (pure extract added to secondary)
Flour (not sure it would add any flavor, but could be mashed / baked-shredded-mashed)
cinnamon,nutmeg,other spices (end of boil / tea added to secondary)
raisins (i like the idea of shredded - 5min boil)
1lb carrots (run through a juicer... add pulp to mash for color/possible sugar, add juice to BK - 5 min boil, only because I feel raw juice in the secondary might be too "planty" but this would need to be tested)
Apple sauce & carrot sauce/babyfood (5 min boil, will require good whirlpool)

Frosting:
cream cheese (not sure how to emulate this flavor, oils from actual product would be bad for the beer)
vanilla (tea added to secondary as listed above)
powdered sugar (what the hell... throw some in)

I also think brown sugar needs to be used somewhere here... possible a secondary tea. Let me know what you think.

Cold crashing tomorrow, before we leave town and will bottle\keg Monday.

How did it turn out?

Was thinking about doing a carrot ale as well using a Breville juicer.

Please, please, please post an update on this.

It turned out quite well. Not what I was picturing exactly, but quite good. Actually have 1 bottle left that I am saving for when the birthday boy visits next month. Its been almost a year so I expect the spices to be minimal, but the base beer should be fine.

In reality, there is so much going on in this beer that it is impossible to really get all the flavor components out of it. I think the novelty factor is what is fun. I will say it is quite a unique flavor and worth doing.

The question may have been directed to the OP, but I used Nottingham and not a belgian yeast.