Jalapeno Pale Ale Recipe Advice

Hey All,

This will be my third go at a Jalapeno Ale. The first is bottled, the second in primary and I want this third one to be brewed this week. This is my first attempt at my own recipe the others were tweaks made to a kit.

Since I'm a beginner with a beginner's setup I'll be sticking to extract. Here is my ingredient list.


6 lbs Light DME
1 lbs Specialty Grains - Crystal 20L
1 lbs Specialty Grains - Crystal 40L
1 Whirfloc Tablet
1.5 oz. Chinook pellot hops (Bittering)
1.0 oz. Cascade whole leaf hops (Aroma)
1.0 oz. Centennial whole leaf hops (Aroma)
0.5 oz. Centennial whole leaf hops (Aroma)
0.5 oz. Cascade whole leaf hops (Aroma)
0.5 lbs Jalapeno peppers (with seeds, vein)

And the directions:

Heat 2.5 gallons of water to 160 degrees
Add muslin bag of specialty malts to the water, hold temperature for 30 minutes.
Remove muslin bag
Take off heat
Dissolve 6 lbs of LDME in the water
Bring to a boil (60 Minute Boil)
Add 1.5 oz Centennial bittering pellot hops (60 minutes)
Add 1.0 oz. Cascade whole leaf hops (45 minutes)
Add 1.0 oz. Centennial whole leaf hops (30 minutes)
Add 0.5 oz. Centennial whole leaf hops (15 minutes)
Add 1 whirfloc tablet
Add 0.5 oz. Cascade whole leaf hops (5 minutes)
Add 0.5 pounds of Jalapeno peppers with seeds and veins (5 minutes)
Remove hop bags
Cool to 75 degrees
Top off to five gallons
Aerate
Pitch Yeast
Primary


I want something slightly bitter with a good floral/citrus aroma. Not too hoppy but enough to please hop-heads. Thoughts? Comments? Anything glaring I should rethink?

Thanks!
Mark

This sounds very interesting to me. What will the jalapeño do? Will you get a slight spice off it? I want to know how this turns out!

I would wait and put the jalapenos in at secondary. The acids in the jalapenos can mess with the yeast. Best to wait until the yeast have done their job first. So add them to secondary, and then transfer the beer on top of them, and wait for at least a week, then bottle. Also just cut in half and put in. Any more then that is unnecessary.

I agree with Shane, put them in the 2ndary. I make what I think is a pretty solid jalapeno ipa and I have brewed with the peppers in the boil and then again with them aging in the secondary and by far the better batch was when the beer was aged on them for 2 weeks. If you add them to the boil I lost a lot of the heat and the taste. When they were in the secondary I got a very mild heat and a nice pepper skin taste to compliment that hops.

Jalapeno IPA? Sounds good... Do you by chance have the recipe? or send it to me? I would appreciate it.

Shaneoco1981 said:

Jalapeno IPA? Sounds good... Do you by chance have the recipe? or send it to me? I would appreciate it.

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I'll second that. Love the jalapeno taste.

I am really interested in the jalapeño addition. It sounds really unique and tasty :-D

I just tasted the Jalapeno ale I brewed with the girlfriend a while back, not bad at all. I think this will be a nice experiment. With that one I boiled, with this one I think I'll add to secondary.

@Wedge421, do you think I should move to secondary soon as fermentation is done and let sit for a week or two or should I move after a week and then wait until fermentation is done? Thanks!

Mark

I would wait for 2 weeks, then transfer to secondary for a week to 10 days and then bottle.

I would certainly cut the crystal in half. You will end up with a lot of unfermentables with 2 pounds, I might even go less than one pound depending on the make up of the extract. Also, another option for the jalapenos is to make a simple syrup solution and infuse it with chopped up jalapenos, then strain with a sanitized strainer and add at the end of fermentation. I find that the heat and flavor infuses very well into a near boiling sugar solution, perhaps better than into a 68F wort. I haven't used this for beer but have tried it for mixed drinks several times. You also take out the possibility of infection with this method. Fruit/vegetable skins often carry wild yeast and bacteria.

I would think adding them to the boil would increase heat but reduce flavor (extracting more out of the cells by the boil breaking them down) so I was surprised to read that above.

I definitely agree about adding in secondary. You'll get way more fresh pepper flavor out of it.

This is all great stuff. Thanks a lot everyone. I'm going to cut down on the specialty malts and go with the secondary addition.

MarkIafrate said:

This is all great stuff. Thanks a lot everyone. I'm going to cut down on the specialty malts and go with the secondary addition.

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Let us know how it turns out. We are all interested.

I'm sure this goes without saying, but jalapeños vary a lot in heat. The ones I got in Texas were at least an order of magnitude hotter than the ones I get am getting in California, which are not much hotter than a Hatch chile.

Being a pepper head, I agree that jalapeños do very in heat. Things I look for if I buy them or grow them is this. I look for firmness, a little red or black, pointed end, and pop the stem off to smell it will have a heat smell. Also the Texas A&M style jalapeños will be milder. You can tell these by the size (they are bigger), rounded ends, and generally milder with a bell pepper taste.
One thing you might try if your looking for a little more heat is adding a Serrano Pepper. They are generally found rite by the jalapeños and are smaller in size and hotter, they are also in the chili family so the taste is very similar to the jalapeño really you can't tell the difference beside the heat. So mixing one are two in with your jalapeños should kick up the heat.
Also boiling the peppers will get the oils out of the skin of the chilies where a lot of flavor and heat is located. So you might try steeping them.
I hope this chili information helps. Let me know what you decided and how this brew turns out.

Mug
WTexan

I'm very interested in this too. I love chili beer but can't find any near me. So I guess I'll brew my own. Maybe with scotch bonnets though.

I think I am going to try this on Saturday but cut the specialty grains by half.

I have also heard of using part roasted peppers to give the flavor more depth.

Being from New Mexico and loving chiles more than any other food ever I can say that I have done my fair share of chile beers and I have done several with peppers in the boil and in the fermenter and I doubt I will ever add them to the boil anymore you just dont get much out of them. Also the best results I have got are from roasting the hell out of the peppers on my grill until the skins are black and blistered then throwing them in the fermenter or keg in a bag. I usually just make a 1.040 ish pale with only 2-row also..

I tried a co-worker's jalapeño IPA yesterday. All he did was take his favorite IPA and add a raw jalapeño (cut in half lengthwise and seeded) for the entire 60 minute boil. Then took a second pepper, roasted it and added it to the secondary with the dry hops. He said a little bit of char on the roasted pepper is fine. I'm guessing when you do it this way, it kills the acid that may affect the yeast. All I have to say is it was very tasty and goes well with tacos.

my friend just added one slice of pepper when he bottled it....the first sip and i could breath thru my ears

All,

I have read through the various Jalapeno Ale topics and had a few questions. I brewed an APA kit and so far it has been pretty good. After 10 days in primary I transferred to a class carboy and threw in 4 chopped up New York State Jalapenos (Which after tasting a piece seem to be 6x more spicy than traditional Jalapenos) anyways it has been just over 24 hours on the peppers and I wanted to taste a sample. As I read they should sit on the peppers 4-6 days but after just 1 day the taste is spot on. You can taste, smell, and feel the jalapenos but its not spicy or over powering in any way.

My Questions are:
-Is the sample I took from the wine thief near the top (and the peppers) consistent to the other 4.8 gallons under it or is this just the spice from the top and needs to saturated?
-How do I taste a sample not from the top of the carboy?
-What should my next steps be?

I am looking to make a beer as close as possible to Birdsong Jalapeno Ale from Charlotte, NC

Any help is greatly appreciated
Thank you Vets...

Forgot one question. If I wait a day to keg and it turns out too spicy will it mellow out over a few weeks in the keg? Just hate to have 5G of something too spicy. Flavor is perfect right now just trying to decide if I need to keg now or wait until tomorrow...

The heat and flavor will mellow with time. I noticed a big difference after a month with mine.

Nice three revival BTW!

Thanks for the reply. What was your base? I made a kit from More Beer called American Pale Ale II because the reviews were great. The taste seems like exactly what I was aiming for. Drank a large uncarbonated sample last night.

I created a small test batch using cream ale a my base. But as I often do I stretched it from a 2.5 gal to a 4 gal batch after I purchased my ingredients, and so I had to find things to increase it as I had spent my hobby $$$.

It's a Frankenstein of a recipe…

1 lb pilsen LME (FO)
1 lb honey (FO)
1 lb extra light DME
0.8 lb wheat DME
0.5 lb 2-row
0.5 lb lager malt
0.25 lb crystal 10
6 oz raw sugar
0.8 oz Liberty (4.9%) @ 50 mins
0.75 oz Liberty @ 20 mins
1/2 whirlflock tab @ 5 mins
2 roasted and sliced jalapeños @ 10 mins
2 roasted and sliced jalapeños for 10 day dry hop
US-05

I'll resize this to my typical 6 gals and straighten up the recipe, but I'd like to add another jalapeño before resizing it.

I'm not certain what boiling it vs dry hopping with it provides though. And I'd like both more flavor and heat.