Adding liqour to a pale ale?

I'm fairly new to brewing (In fact I'm still using Mr.Beer). However, I am currently brewing a pale ale and I was wondering if anyone has added a type of liquor to any of their's for added flavor. I'm still fairly new to brewing so any help or direction would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Hmmm... Not to a pale ale. A RIS, perhaps... maybe others have suggestions.

Uh...why???

Some beers like stouts and such might benefit from, lets say, bourbon soaked oak chips...but a pale ale? Why...isn't a good beer flavorful enough for you?

Don't mess with your first few beers...learn what the ingredients do on their own...learn about what goes into recipe creation...work on your process as a brewer...but don't f things up by experimenting until you actually know enough about what's going on to actually experiment and NOT RUIN A BATCH...Just dumping stuff together, especially on your first batch to "improve flavor" without knowing what the "flavor" is supposed to be to begin with, is NOT how to become a good brewer, or even to make good beer.

OK, that's what I was thinking, I was just wondering if anyone had ever done it. Thanks for the info.

May I suggest you read this thread all the way through...it used to be a sticky..

But it has a lot of great advice in there (though some people don't know the difference between advice and opinion) there is some good information in there...you will see over and over and over about not massing with recipes or kits until you have a few batches under your belt and actually understand the process...this is like cooking...if you don't understand off hand how much salt is good in a dish you can ruin it..not knowing about how ingredients balance each other, just messing around will result in possible dumping of your hard earned money...

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/stone-cold-lead-pipe-lockd-n00b-advice-54362/

Thanks for the link. There is some great info there. I appreciate the advice.

Once the beer gets to a drinkable state, you just pour a glass of beer, then fill a shot glass with your favorite Canadian whiskey, or Scotch, or Bourbon, or Sour Mash... Doesn't really matter....

Now you simply take a sip of the whiskey, and a gulp of the beer...

Repeat as necessary...

Jeffro said:

Once the beer gets to a drinkable state, you just pour a glass of beer, then fill a shot glass with your favorite Canadian whiskey, or Scotch, or Bourbon, or Sour Mash... Doesn't really matter....

Now you simply take a sip of the whiskey, and a gulp of the beer...

Repeat as necessary...

Click to expand...

Oh crap...what's that drink that ole timers used to drink in "shot and shell bars?" You dropped the shot o whiskey in the schooner of beer?

Boilermakers?

And why were they called that?

Revvy said:

Oh crap...what's that drink that ole timers used to drink in "shot and shell bars?" You dropped the shot o whiskey in the schooner of beer?

Boilermakers?

And why were they called that?

Click to expand...

I don't know why they call them boilermakers, but I've never done the drop the shotglass in the beer method...

Just a sip of one, and a gulp of the other.

Just 3 years ago before I quit smoking the whiskey was R&R, and the beer was Rainier...

After I quit smoking I upgraded to Crown Royal and Mirror Pond because I figured that life was too short to drink cheap booze...

Then I started brewing my own beer just last year... Infact tomorrow I will celebrate the one year anniversary of pitching my first yeast.

Like I always say. Once I quit smoking I used that oportunity to take my alcoholism to a whole new level.

Mmmmm boilermaker, that sounds good!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boilermaker_(cocktail) tons of variations here, car bombs are my favorite.

This one sounded interesting to me.

"A "Russian Carbomb" is made by dropping a shot of vodka into a glass of vodka."

SudsItUp said:

I'm fairly new to brewing (In fact I'm still using Mr.Beer). However, I am currently brewing a pale ale and I was wondering if anyone has added a type of liquor to any of their's for added flavor. I'm still fairly new to brewing so any help or direction would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Click to expand...

I would venture a guess that some of the fruit flavored liqueurs could provide a somewhat complimentary flavor to your pale ale, along the lines of the apricot in Magic Hat's #9. However, I would also suspect that any alcoholic harshness that accompanies that fruit would detract from the beers overall flavor. Whiskey, bourbon, ect doesn't really strike me as a beneficial addition to a pale ale but different strokes for different folks.

Revvy said:

May I suggest you read this thread all the way through...it used to be a sticky..

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/stone-cold-lead-pipe-lockd-n00b-advice-54362/

Click to expand...

Wow, this is a great read. This should be stickied in the Beginner's forum.

I split an Irish Stout earlier this year and added two cups of Irish Mist Liqueur to 2 1/2gals. at bottling. Freaking awesome result! Went over really well St Pats day. Will need to cut back on the priming sugar as it was a little too carbed due to the sugars in the liqueur.

It used to be stickied, not sure why it isn't anymore.