Licorice flavor in beer

Anyone know what specialty malt gives a licorice (or anise)
flavor to some dark beers? It's really nasty and I want
to avoid it. I tasted it in SA Imperial Stout, according to their
web site they use
Two-row Harrington, Metcalfe and Copeland pale malts,
Caramel 60, Munich, Special B, Smoked Malted Barley,
Roasted Unmalted Barley, and Malted Wheat.

I would guess it's the special B.

Chris

I think they actually use aniseed in very small amounts.

How small is small? I actually subscribed to this thread as I tried a dark beer with a slight licorice taste the other day and quite like it so was hoping to find out how to recreated it

Actually, most good brew shops sell brewers licorice for this purpose.
http://www.austinhomebrew.com/product_info.php?products_id=494

i would think a tablespoon in a 5gal batch would be enough, but it would be easier to use the brewers licorice as chshrecat posted above

ChshreCat said:

Actually, most good brew shops sell brewers licorice for this purpose.
http://www.austinhomebrew.com/product_info.php?products_id=494

Click to expand...

That explains a lot. I wonder why they don't mention it on their website
though.

Chris

You might be tasting a combination of the smoked malt and the Special B.

david_42 said:

You might be tasting a combination of the smoked malt and the Special B.

Click to expand...

I'm leaning toward the licorice or aniseed explanation, because I tasted
the same flavor in one of Magic Hat's dark beers (I think it was Howl),
which uses totally different malts (crystal and carafa).

Chris

Cipper said:

I'm leaning toward the licorice or aniseed explanation, because I tasted
the same flavor in one of Magic Hat's dark beers (I think it was Howl),
which uses totally different malts (crystal and carafa).

Chris

Click to expand...

I take that back, it was probably one of Saranac's seasonal brews but
I don't remember which one.

Chris

My porter has a licorice flavor to it that I wasn't planning on - and I most certainly didn't add any brewer's licorice. I've posted our recipe here:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/need-help-our-porter-217272/

Anyone figure this out yet?

i got on this (old) thread looking for what made a beer i made and tasted a sample of tonight as i put it in the secondary taste like licorice. the only thing you listed above that it had in common was the munich malt. it also had crystal 40, crystal 120, cascade, centennial, chinook, m44 yeast and wlp001. the only factors i don't usually use are the centennial and the crystal 120. the only one i had in common that you listed was the munich malt. hope this helps.

Are you using tap water from West Virginia, by chance?

You can get dark fruit flavors, to the point of unpleasantness, with dark crystal. Different brands have different flavors. Anything from about 90L or darker has progressing plum, raisin, prune, fig, leather, tobacco, flavor. Add some phenolics from tap water with chloramines or chlorine, and you can easily get licorice flavor.