It smells like a damn hotdog

I brewed a Wit a little over two weeks ago and I had seen a few recipes call for cumin seed and some not. I was on the fence as to if I should add it or not right up to the time I dumped it in.

Now, 17 days later I check the gravity and it's where it should be. I drank the sample as you always should and the damn thing smelled like a hotdog on a bun.
It tasted good for a really grean, flat spiced beer but damn. You bring the glass to your face and you get slapped with the cumin seed and a bready smell. Now I wish I would have not added the damn cumin.

Looks like I'll have 10 gallons of hotdog beer aging a few months.

Make a chili beer to go with it

I really like cumin, I use it in meat and sausages, however I would never use it in beer.

c.n.budz said:

Make a chili beer to go with it

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Oh hell no, you could not pay me to drink that crap...

I really like cumin, I use it in meat and sausages, however I would never use it in beer.

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yeah I do too.
but I have seen a few recipes here that call for it. My bad I guess. I went back and reread some of them. One says that he let it age 6 month and it was great. The other said that it was nasty (this is on the 2nd page) but then he let it sit around a few months and now it's good. Don't efin post a recipe until you KNOW it's a good one....

Again, I can't blame them, I put the crap in there, it's my problem to drink.

hey, just make one that smells like a baseball and you'll think your at the game LOL

i like hotdogs... give me the recepie! j/k well, the good thing is that you're probably one of the few people in the world that has make a hotdog beer. there's alot of crazy **** going around here but i doubt anybody's done anything like this!

Odds are the spice flavor will drop out considerably as it ages. Longer the better. Is this in bottles? If so then you can at least sample one very once in a while.

This is hilarious!

Sounds like you've got yourself a great novelty tailgate drink for the baseball season! That's good stuff. I think you should put a picture of Harry Carey on the label and name it something like "In the future all beer will taste like hot dogs! Cubs win!"

Thanks for the laugh (sorry it is at your expense)

Denny's Evil Concoctions said:

Odds are the spice flavor will drop out considerably as it ages. Longer the better. Is this in bottles? If so then you can at least sample one very once in a while.

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No I don't bottle. I'll just keg it up and a week or two and let her sit.

Was that cumin seed or coriander seed in the wit recipe. I have never seen cumin in a beer recipe ever. But maybe I just don't get out much.

Short Drive said:

Was that cumin seed or coriander seed in the wit recipe. I have never seen cumin in a beer recipe ever. But maybe I just don't get out much.

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That's exactly what I was thinking. I've never seen cumin called for in a wit recipe. Coriander is the thing there.

But, you have it, so go with it. I bet that beer would be great with a bowl of chili or a wedge of Muenster cheese (the real Muenster, not the bland Kraft ka-ka).


TL

Short Drive said:

Was that cumin seed or coriander seed in the wit recipe. I have never seen cumin in a beer recipe ever. But maybe I just don't get out much.

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Here is one.

I just spent the last 10 minutes looking for the others and I can't find them.
I should have saved a link to them.

http://www.homebrewhome.com/recipe.php?view_recipe=1&recipe=52&view=1

still not the one I was looking for.

Well, I'll be a son of a gun. I've never picked up cumin in Hoegaarden, though.


TL

Yeah, I was under the impression that coriander and cardamom were the main two spices used in these styles. Along with orange zest.

I guess I need to get out more. I never would have thought it would be in there. The recipe from cheese an 1/8 of a teaspoon will be noticeable. But 5 one hundredth of an once fro the other one is not much.

Short Drive said:

I guess I need to get out more. I never would have thought it would be in there. The recipe from cheese an 1/8 of a teaspoon will be noticeable. But 5 one hundredth of an once fro the other one is not much.

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Ground cumin is very light I'm sure it's more then you think. The one from Cheese had 2 additions of the 1/8 teaspoon I only did the one at like 10 or 15 minutes.

Hoegaard contains coriander, which is the seed of Coriandrum sativum, what we Americans call cilantro (the English still call it coriander). Coriander seeds have a citrus flavor which would fit well with orange peel, the other flavoring used in a wit.

Cumin is the seed of Cuminum cyminum , which is the spice that gives chili or Mexican (and some Indian) food it's distinctive taste.

Maybe somebody who put the recipe together had Mexican food on his/her mind and transposed which spice to use. I can't imagine what a cumin beer would taste like, but it would probably pair well with a bowl of chili.

I tried a jalepeno homebrew 30 years ago. I didn't like it then, and I wouldn't brew it now.

I would have a hard time drinking beer that tastes like a hot dog. I sure hope it mellows out some.

All spices drop off over time. What you really need is to accelerate your self to near light speed then decelerate.

The relativistic time dilation should cause very little subjective time for you, but your beer that was not sped up should be very well aged.

If you can't do that then shove that carboy in a corner, make a ton of other beers and revisist in several months. If you are kegging then I find carbonating then cold staoring helps drop off unwanted spice flavors a bit quicker. I had a pumpkin beer that took a while to drop off this odd burnt flavor even though no malt burnt during the mash - never could figure that out, must have been the spices or something.

:rockin:

It doesn't take much to go from witbier smell to hotdog smell. My first pitcher of Hoegaarden ever I couldn't finish because all I tasted or smelled was hotdog-water. Since then I've been able to enjoy it, but I swear that first time it was uncannily hotdoggy. My tablemates agreed. Perhaps there was cumin in the air . . .

I did exactly the same thing on a whim while making a Hoegarten clone. I actually like how it ended up, even thought I used too much of the Cumin. It didn't give me hot dog but it was an interesting addition. At the amount I used it dominated the coriander and dried Orange peel, but you could tell that by using less it would add an pleasant note. I'm at work so I don't have my notes with me but I think I used a 1/4 teaspoon in the boil and 1/4 teaspoon at flame out, which is when I added the coriander and orange. When I make it again I'll use no more than 1/4 teaspoon total. I do like what it adds and as time goes by it's getting better and better. Like I said, it was too much at first but has definately improved with time.

PTN

paulthenurse said:

I did exactly the same thing on a whim while making a Hoegarten clone. I actually like how it ended up, even thought I used too much of the Cumin. It didn't give me hot dog but it was an interesting addition. At the amount I used it dominated the coriander and dried Orange peel, but you could tell that by using less it would add an pleasant note. I'm at work so I don't have my notes with me but I think I used a 1/4 teaspoon in the boil and 1/4 teaspoon at flame out, which is when I added the coriander and orange. When I make it again I'll use no more than 1/4 teaspoon total. I do like what it adds and as time goes by it's getting better and better. Like I said, it was too much at first but has definately improved with time.

PTN

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Good to know. I used 1/4 teaspoon for a 10 gallon batch and although you can't taste it you sure can smell it.

I'm sure you can taste it. It's that woody, earthy background flavor with the coriander and orange. 1/8 teaspoon per 5 gallon batch will definately be noticable to your pallette. I use ground cumin as a part of my dry rub on almost any meat I grill or BBQ so I am very familiar with it's flavor, maybe that makes it easier for me to pick up.

[OT]If I'm cooking a steak, a hamburger, whatever, I sprinkle on groung cumin, ground garlic, salt, pepper and chili powder. It adds a very nice element to the seared meat. (Seared like the rest of us sear a steak, not like EdWort sears his on his nuclear reactor BBQ. Damn, I want one of those.) [/OT]

Give yourself a month and I bet you'll be feeling much better about the brew. I am lucky, I'm in a period where I have about 10 kegs of beer ready to go so I can just leave this one alone for as long as it takes to reach where ever it's going. Where ever that is, I can tell it will be a nice, fresh, interesting beer. i'm sure yours will be also.

PTN