Bacon Stout. Please help.

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Homebrewtastic

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I've been brewing for a few years and this year I am finally going to enter into my first homebrew competition. This year the specialty category is strangebrew. They have a list of odd ingredients from which you must pick two to add to your brew. One of the odd ingredients is cured meat.

So I want to add bacon to my already tried and true breakfast stout recipe. Has anyone ever done this and can offer me some tips? I found the porkfelwein page, but I'm not too sure that I just want to add cooked meat directly into my brew.

My thought is that for one I need to minimize the amount of fat that gets into the brew as much as possible. So here's my plan.

Take some bacon and trim off all of the visible fat. Cook the bacon until it's crispy. Then soak the bacon in some scotch for a day, and then place it in the freezer. The remaining fat SHOULD float to the top and I can scrape it off. I got this idea from another webpage that talks about adding bacon to bottled beer.

Then strain it and add the baconated whiskey to the beer while it's in secondary.

Thoughts? Comments? Advice?
 
I always thought that if I was going to try a bacon brew, I'd try it with imitation bacon bits. Bacon flavor without the grease and meat.
 
lmao.. wow.. you can add bacon to beer.. I have a friend who's going to get a kick out of this..

Then again maybe i shouldn't tell him, then he'll want me to make it >_>
 
I always thought that if I was going to try a bacon brew, I'd try it with imitation bacon bits. Bacon flavor without the grease and meat.

I considered that but the rules specifically said "cured meat". So I don't think imitation would count. I also would worry about the artificial ingredients going into my brew, as those are never good for our dear friend saccharomyces.
 
Thoughts? Comments? Advice?

Sounds gross.
Many threads listed below on prior attempts.
Don't do it.
 
lmao.. wow.. you can add bacon to beer.. I have a friend who's going to get a kick out of this..

Then again maybe i shouldn't tell him, then he'll want me to make it >_>

Well, I'm picking up ingredients tomorrow with plans to brew this in a week and a half. I'm cautiously optimistic. I've always felt that Founder's breakfast stout was lacking some porky goodness.

I'll let you know how it turns out. Who knows, it may end up being worth making again.
 
Thoughts? Comments? Advice?

Sounds gross.
Many threads listed below on prior attempts.
Don't do it.

I read the porkfelwein thread... and could never quite tell if they were joking or not.

Besides, I can't not do it now. At this point it's my mount everest.
 
alright i'm optimistic, i'm subscribing. Let us now how it works out and who knows maybe i'll be able to make some bacon beer for a friends birthday..
 
May I suggest adding some maple syrup? Oatmeal, bacon, maple... doesn't get much more breakfasty than that. Maybe you could add some Bisquick to the mash? Perhaps a few eggs?
 
Well, one suggestion might be to cook the bacon in the oven. Put it on a rack over a sheet pan and any excess grease will drop off of it instead of it sitting in the puddle of drippings like it would if you pan fried it. And use a good burbon. :D
 
I thought it might be a good idea to share my base recipe with you fine folks.

7lbs. Maris Otter
5lbs. 2-row
2 lb. Flaked Oats
.5lb. 60L
.5lb. 75L
1/2lb. Chocolate Malt
1/2lb. Chocolate Rye
1 lb. Molasses

2 oz. Horizon Hops 12%AA - 60 minutes
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa 20 minutes
2 oz. Dunkin Donuts Coffee - 20 minutes

Dry Nottingham Ale Yeast

2 cups brewed coffee secondary - 10 days

This is my stout. O.G. is 1.088 it ferments down to 1.021. Pretty awesome on it's own. Hopefully bacon will make it even more breakfasty.
 
Definitely add some maple syrup. Grade B and it will be like Canadian Breakfast Stout with BACON!! Damn, that would be great for a hangover. A few over easy eggs, bacon, and a bacon stout!

Subscribed!
 
I'm liking the maple syrup idea, and if I were just brewing this for regular home consumption that's probably what I would do. But the contest specifically says "cured meat" as one of the strange ingredients.

David: I'm thinking 1 lb. of bacon, fat trimmed, sautéed, soaked in whiskey for several days then adding the whiskey to the secondary.
 
I talked to the brewers from Uncommon Brewers for several hours a couple of weeks ago. They have a bacon brown, said they throw the bacon right in the boil. No problems with head retention or anything. It was an awesome beer.
 
I talked to the brewers from Uncommon Brewers for several hours a couple of weeks ago. They have a bacon brown, said they throw the bacon right in the boil. No problems with head retention or anything. It was an awesome beer.

Awesome info. Thanks Chris!
 
I did this w 2 gallons of a 5 gallon batch of my oatmeal stout. Uncooked weight of bacon was 1/3 lb for the 2 gallons......not nearly enough. I cooked the bacon in the oven until crispy, then added and boiled for 20 mins. As I said not nearly enough bacon, no taste or nose to speak of, but the beer still came out great.
 
Did you trim the fat at all? Or just the bacon all on it's own.

So maybe I should consider 1/2lb. of bacon per gallon? Does that sound like a good amount?
 
Did not trim, cooked until crispy.

Your math sounds pretty good...2-2.5 lbs per 5 gallons should do it.

Let us know how it comes out.
 
A suggestion for the bacon. If you have a Trader Joe's or other store that carries this, try the apple-smoked bacon premium thick-sliced stuff. There are typically cured and uncured varieties as well.
 
A suggestion for the bacon. If you have a Trader Joe's or other store that carries this, try the apple-smoked bacon premium thick-sliced stuff. There are typically cured and uncured varieties as well.

I'm actually going to go with Wright's brand bacon. It's good quality stuff. And it has the benefit of being fairly lean.

While I believe the posters who said that from what they've had, or in their experience, that the fat doesn't hurt the beer; it's still something I'd like to avoid as much as possible.
 
Not sure how temp will affect the fat, but maybe if you throw the bacon in the boil, the fat will stay seperated from the wort and float on top. Hopefully when you go from kettle to fermenter, most of the fat will be left behind.
 
so, what's the other unusual ingredient going into your bacon beer?

So here's the list of strange ingredients, of which I have to have at least two. FYI this is for the Houston Dixie Cup.


Curry powder
Beans
Tarragon
Cured meat
Gummi candi
Flowers (must be edible/safe)
Mouse
Jelly doughnut
Some part of the celery plant
Something from the sea (not minerals or water)
Chocolate milk

I'm going with beans and cured meat. While they aren't exactly strange in beer, I'm going with vanilla beans. Even though they aren't technically beans I'm also using cocoa beans and coffee beans.

I had also considered going with a saison brewed with curry and chamomile flowers, which I still think would be really good, but I just couldn't pass up a chance to make a beer with bacon.
 
I remember reading in a BYO magazine that you can "dry hog" beer in a secondary. It mentioned what was stated previously to cook the bacon in an oven with a wire rack to allow the fat to drip off. Then they stated to place the bacon into your secondary and follow the same procedures that you would use when you dry hop a beer.
 
What about smoked-wilderness-mouses? (ekkkkkk)
Now serious: Did you chose how you´re going to use the bacon? What about adding it to the boil, after the oven stuff? I´m not sure if the dry-bacon will work fine.
 
Might be worth trying to make a bacon extract and adding that to the brew instead.

1) Cook bacon, crumble it and put it in a jar.
2) Top with a neutral spirit (or scotch if you want something smokey)
3) Let it sit for a few weeks (?) in the fridge.
4) Peel the hardened fat off the top, filter, and voila: basically bacon flavored vodka.

Just adding some of that to the secondary might work. It might be the best way to avoid getting fat from the bacon destroying any hopes of producing any head in the beer.
 
Might be worth trying to make a bacon extract and adding that to the brew instead.

1) Cook bacon, crumble it and put it in a jar.
2) Top with a neutral spirit (or scotch if you want something smokey)
3) Let it sit for a few weeks (?) in the fridge.
4) Peel the hardened fat off the top, filter, and voila: basically bacon flavored vodka.

Just adding some of that to the secondary might work. It might be the best way to avoid getting fat from the bacon destroying any hopes of producing any head in the beer.

Isn´t the point here, but won´t some smoked malt produce the bacon flavor to a beer?
 
That was actually my original plan.

My thought is that for one I need to minimize the amount of fat that gets into the brew as much as possible. So here's my plan.

Take some bacon and trim off all of the visible fat. Cook the bacon until it's crispy. Then soak the bacon in some scotch for a day, and then place it in the freezer. The remaining fat SHOULD float to the top and I can scrape it off.
 
For all interested parties the stout is in the secondary. I decided to go with the homemade bacon extract approach. It goes in on Tuesday. So far the stout is tasting quite delicious. I went with a lower ABV version of the stout as normally it's quite strong and boozy and didn't want it to compete with the bacon flavors.
 
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