Bacon Stout. Please help.

Flower = hibiscus, and you're halfway home, baby

If I had done this, in order to nominally qualify for the competition I would have gotten some flavor from a homemade bacon flavored bourbon or something.

I would have gotten a lot of the bacon flavor from rauchmalt. I might have experimented with adding a small amount of pink salt to give the piquant flavor typical of cured meats. Some brown sugar or maple syrup wouldn't hurt.

Then the second ingredient is easy, fine it with super-kleer which is made from shellfish.

Thats exactly what I would do, whiskey would do well in a stout. You could also use vodka if you want a neutral flavor

remilard said:

If I had done this, in order to nominally qualify for the competition I would have gotten some flavor from a homemade bacon flavored bourbon or something.

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Apparently most people aren't actually reading the thread in any detail.

I am making bacon extract with cooked bacon fat (as the smoke flavor compounds in bacon are fat soluble not water soluble) and scotch whiskey.

Homebrewtastic said:

Apparently most people aren't actually reading the thread in any detail.

I am making bacon extract with cooked bacon fat (as the smoke flavor compounds in bacon are fat soluble not water soluble) and scotch whiskey.

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I'm reading the thread and I think its a great idea. The only thing that I would add is that if you're already doing an extraction with scotch (i would use bourbon, but that's just me) than I don't think you need to worry about getting too much fat into the beer. There should be a limited amount of fat which can dissolve in a 40% ethanol/water solution anyway so I don't think you have to worry about that. If I was you I might just put the bacon and grease into a couple mason jars, top them up with scotch, shake them real good, let it sit for a week and then throw it in the fridge until it separates really well (fat should rise to the top). Then you could could poke a straw through the fat layer and siphon the bacon scotch off the bottom.

I think that this should work, though I haven't tried it. Now I will be thinking about bacon bourbon baltic porter for the rest of the day.

There are barkeepers/mixologists who make bacon infused vodkas. They put rendered bacon fat into the vodka and shake it up each day for a week. They then put it in the freezer to solidify all of the fat, and then filter it once or twice through a coffee filter. It provides a cocktail that does not have fat in it but has the bacon flavor.

I agree with a few other people - I brought my smoked porter to a homebrew festival recently and at least 10 people asked if it had meat/bacon in it. I would go with a smoked porter base to minimize the amount of actual bacon you need to use.

Bad news for people who love bad news....

The stout has an infection. I've got a pellicle on top. However the bacon extract is tasting quite bacony, so I'm going to save it for a future batch.

Homebrewtastic said:

Bad news for people who love bad news....

The stout has an infection. I've got a pellicle on top. However the bacon extract is tasting quite bacony, so I'm going to save it for a future batch.

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Might as well taste the stout. It might be fantastic!

BYO May-June 2010 has a great couple pages on bacon beer. You are right, NO FAT, the fat will go rancid and ruin the beer.
He talks about 'dry hogging' beer. Cook the bacon in the stove till crispy and fatless, but not burnt. Then add to the secondary, like dry hopping. This is definitely on my to do list, I just have not got there yet.
PM me your info, I would definitely like to arrange a taste of your finished product.

CHEERS!

PS I was late to the party, sorry. I will be dry hogging' a breakfast stout based on your initial recipe and would like to trade when you use your bacon infused extract.

GOOD NEWS!!! NO INFECTION!!

I've been brewing for years and still every time I see a weird formation on top I think "OH NOES INFECTION!!!" However this time it looked just like the brett pellicle I had on a sour saison I made.

I just got home from work and tasted it, definitely not infected. What I thought was a pellicle has started settling out and now just looks like flocculant yeast.

Osborn - I'll PM you my info. I read that same BYO article last week and considered "dry hogging" but had already committed to a course of action. I would love to swap brews when they're done.

I'm also considering bottle conditioning with maple syrup to reinforce the bacon flavor.

Thoughts?

Oh also this round I did drop down the gravity. The original beer is great and has lots of complex alcohols, but I was worried about too many flavors overwhelming the bacon. I cut down my base grains to 7lbs. Maris Otter and 2.5lbs. 2-row. Past that the recipe is exactly as before.

I live in Quebec, Canada and there are a lot of local microbrews that use maple syrup here, which I suppose isn't that surprising. I find it all ferments out completely and you don't taste the maple too much. If you are going to use maple syrup, I would buy the REALLY darkest kind you can get, which should give you the most aroma for your buck when its all fermented out.

Good info to have. I had heard before that maple is really fermentable.

I've also heard that it's best to add in secondary or bottling, that you get more flavor that way. I'll be sure to buy the darkest maple syrup I can find though.

If you still need to add beans, Asian/Japenese markets sell red beans that they use to make bean paste. It's basically cooked and mashed and they add sugar to it to sweeten. You could probably add ground beans to your mash, though i don't know how the added proteins would affect everything.

edit: yes i read through everything and i know you already brewed. just a sidenote in case you revisit this for a future brew.

All the talk about maple made me remember Radical Brewing. Fenugreek is used to make artificial maple syrups. It's a herb used in Indian food according to Radical Brewing. I'll see if I can find it at the local indian mart.

If are doing the whole breakfast thing, why not chuck a jelly doughnut in to the mash? Or the boil. I'd like to see what would be left of it (if any) afterward.

For all interested parties it's getting kegged tomorrow. Tasting notes to follow soon.

Okay so it's kegged. I tasted it with the extract and it has a slight bacon smokiness to it. I'm hoping that after it sets for a couple of weeks and as the forced CO2 dissolves into the beer it will get more of the flavor.

Overall though it's a very drinkable beer that I'm looking forward to for the chilly months ahead.

I had a bacon beer at a brewfest in Sacramento and it was the only beer I poured out that day! It was sooooooo gross one sip and it ended up on the ground! Just 1 drinkers experience.

Milehigh, what was so gross about it?

The Flavors did not go well together, I think it was a bacon stout, but I did have a lot of samples from the brews that I did like that day so my recall is a bit fuzzy sorry.

Great thread! Did I miss somehting though? Has the beer been entered in the competition that it originally brewed for?

In reading the list of ingredients I think I would have killed two birds with one stone and gone with one of these,



A gummy mouse.

Unfortunately it was net ready in time for competition. However I am enjoying a glass right this moment.

The bacon flavor is there, but very much second fiddle to everything else going on. I only kegged yesterday and the CO2 has not dissolved as well as it will after a couple of weeks. But I at least have a good idea of what to expect.

Chocolate and coffee are the dominate flavors. Bacon smokiness is a bit in the nose and on the front of the palate. Then completely awash with big coffee and chocolate.

I will say that this is a solid very drinkable beer that will be consumed quickly once the cold weather hits. It's definitely more than just a novelty from having bacon in it.

I will say though that it's not such a far cry from the base recipe that it's something that couldn't be duplicated (at least closely enough) by just adding some smoked malt to the recipe.

Cheers!

Also Revvy, would gummy mice leave gummy mice turds in my beer?

So a week later more of this beer has been consumed. It's definitely best at warmer temperatures. Very thick but the sweetness is offset by the huge coffee notes. The bacon flavor is now much more pronounced. It's still definitely on the front of the palate and quickly replaced by other flavors, but very very nice. There's also a lot of complex alcohol flavors going on from the different fermentables in there, along with the bacon infused scotch. On the downside there is a certain mineral like taste from the molasses. I think that a solid month of aging and this beer will be perfect.

I'll say this is definitely more than a novelty and one damn fine brew.

How much bacon did you end up using?

I took 2.5 lbs of bacon, cooked it. Put all of the fat in a tupperware container and poured in 2 cups of scotch (Johnny Walker Black). I let it sit for 2 weeks, shook it up once or twice a day. I then refrigerated it for a day so that the fat congealed, and then slowly poured it through a coffee filter three times to get rid of all the fat.

Boyd, just saw that you have this on deck. I recommend cutting back the amount of chocolate and coffee I used. The flavors are a little competing. If you're going to do the molasses like I did make sure you do at least a 90 minute boil. Otherwise I would cut it down a shade.

Once again this beer is very good but I'm already thinking of ways it could be much better.

I'm going to do it a little bit differently since I'm doing partial mash. Here's my recipe:

6lb - Northwestern Dark LME
1lb - Northwestern Dark DME
.5lb - Chocolate malt
.75lb - Crystal 200*
.25lb - Smoked malt
1 oz - Brewers Gold @ 40 min
1 oz - Kent Golding @ 0 min (end)
8 oz - Ghirardelli Unsweetened Cocoa Powder (end of boil)
2.5 lbs - Bacon
2 c - Woodford Reserve Whiskey
WL English Ale Yeast

Looks good but I would change those hops. BG has that very distinct black currant flavor that might clash. The horizon hops really work well for this recipe.

Also, no coffee?

Great experiment. Thanks for keeping this online log.

A few random comments here:

• I've made smoke beers with Breiss Cherry smoked malt and it is sweet bacon. Nothing like the woodsy smokey Beechwood that Weyermann uses. This alone might suffice for those that want to keep their meat out of their drink
• My local whole foods store has vegetarian bacon bits made from soy. They sure smell like the real thing. Unfortunately, they contain soybean oil, so you still have to deal with that. Anyway, might be an interesting experiment to avoid the meat.
• I have made a smoked porter before and the smoke was greatly diminished by the dark grains in the beer. So, if you are making a bacon beer with dark grains (porter, stout) consider using a heavy hand when adding your bacon or smoked grains (or whatever you use for the bacon flavor and aroma). I know that for smoked beers, in competition, the smoke disappears very quickly as the judge works through others, so I'd think heavier flavor would help if you are intending it to be judged.

Abadeon said:

Isn´t the point here, but won´t some smoked malt produce the bacon flavor to a beer?

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Was going to suggest the same. I'm a fan of Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Maerzen -- makes me think of bacon. (Alder smoked beer makes me think of Salmon which I find nasty).

Great thread! Read the whole thing. Please post your post recipe, after turning down the chocolate, and coffee. Best part is when Revvy popped in, when that one's ear's perk up....it is definitely worth noting.

Here's the exact recipe.

7lbs. Maris Otter
2 lb. Flaked Oats
.5lb. 60L
.5lb. 75L
1/2lb. Chocolate Malt
1/2lb. Chocolate Rye
1 lb. Molasses (16oz by volume)

2 oz. Horizon Hops 12%AA - 60 minutes
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa 20 minutes
2 cups Dunkin Donuts Coffee - (goes in the mash)
2 cups bacon extract - at bottliing/kegging


Dry Nottingham Ale Yeast

Next time I'm going to cut the coffee in half and the molasses.

1) 1 cup of coffee, and no molasses at all.


or


2) 1 cup of coffee, and 8 ozs. of molasses.

I thought that you said a lot of chocolate covering up the bacon, you cutting that one in half as well.

This is way out there, I have to do a five gallon batch. I'll brew a ten gallon brew, and put something else in the other fermenter (hashbrowns)

Cut the coffee and molasses both in half.

Just an update. A couple more weeks of aging has helped this beer immensely. The bacon is becoming more assertive and the coffee and dark chocolate have both backed down.

I'm still kind of getting a bit of a minerality from the molasses, but I'm sure it's mellowing out considerably. I'm thinking of just leaving it alone for another 2 months before drinking anymore.

Holy crap balls. I just thought I would update all of you. I've had this sucker aging for a few months now and it is AWESOME AND A HALF! I literally haven't touched it since October and just left it in the keg. A few nights ago I decided to re-apply the CO2 to make sure it was properly carbed, and let it set for a few days. I'm drinking a glass now and it is awesome.

The bacon flavor is right up front followed by coffee and chocolate. The minerality from the molasses has all but vanished, and the little bit that's there is actually kind of nice.

The IBUs have knocked down considerably (as was to be expected) with the age on it. This is one tasty brew. I'm probably going to bottle it all up and lay it down until next winter.

Homebrewtastic, you mentioned you would have cut the coffee and chocolate, and molasses in half. Is that still true now that is it aged? Also, with the molasses, would you recommend using a dark natural maple syrup instead? Any ideas of how this would affect it? Thanks, this is quickly moving up to something I want to brew right away!

Dakota

Even with age I would still cut the molasses down. The molasses made a mineral quality that dissipated over time, but is still somewhat there. It's not offensive at all, and is kind of a nice additional point to the beer... but I could still do with less.

I did add the maple syrup when I kegged, and as it has aged the maple syrup has shined through more as the other flavors dissipated. However I have a hard time discerning the bacon from the maple, as the two flavors are very much intertwined.

What I would suggest is leaving the grains all the same. Take the coffee out of the boil. Put the chocolate in (1/4 cup) the boil, and cut the molasses down to 1/2 lb.

Then add brewed coffee in after primary fermentation. It also wouldn't hurt to make a larger portion of the bacon extract, or let the extract set for longer than I did.