Beer with........ pipe tobacco?

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
I also had this idea and decided to try it (I have pics of the process but dont know how to upload them here) i made a 2 gallon batch of a Berry ale (used a real old mr. beer fermenter a friend had) this was just for fun never planed to drink it....

4oz crystal 15l
2 lbs ultralight
1 lb bavarian wheat
2 oz maltodextrine

1/2 oz glacier at 60 min
1/2 can of berry blend skoal (chewing tobacco) at last 10 of boil

60 min boil
everything went well till the last 10 when i dumped the skoal in, ahhhh what a crappy smell, the boil turned all dark and particals of chew were floating all around (all the boys got a kick out of this one) cooled the wort, pitched yeast
fermented for 21 days then bottled it got about a case out of it
20days later i cracked one, poured it into a glass, nasty oily color to it..... very light carb.

took 1 decent drink.......
AHHHHHHHHHHHH lets just say DONT USE TOBACCO IN ANY BREW.........
the only batch I ever dumped...... Got a pretty good chew buzz from it........but didnt no what the effects would be from drinking a whole beer since i know to much nicotine can be deadly........ So my opinion is dont try it especially with pipe tobacco, sounds worse than my trial.......
if anyone can explain how to put up pics, id love to show the pics.....
 
I think I covered it here....



The stuff that comes out in the smoke which will attach itself to the grain will be more often than not, be just as nasty as the nicotine...How do you think the hickory taste gets from the smoke to the meat when you smoke a brisket for example? It's chemical molecules that cling to and penetrate the meat...the same thing will happen to the grain....the compounds given off in the burning tobacco will attach to the grain...then they will leach into the wort...

Heres what the Center for Disease control says about nicotine poisoning...



This is NOT something you wanna mess with folks...all specultion aside...This is potentially LETHAL!!!!!



Again, this is NOT how those flavors appear in wines and beers where you appear to taste it....What you taste REMINDS YOU of the flavors...but they are NOT THE ACTUAL MATERIALS!!! It's a METAPHOR....

If you guys aren't grasping this idea...listen to this basic brewing podcast....



He talsk about how we taste, and how it triggers memories of things...

I love a good cigar...I smoked one today while brewing...I haven't smoked a pipe in over a decade....Like ghack said, smoke em if you got em...but don't CONCENTRATE the chemicals in you beer!

I think that you are missing the point here, it looks as if your data is concerning cigarette smoke which is much different that tobacco smoke. The flavor that you get from smoking grain with some whole tobacco leaves in with the wood has great potential in my eyes. As far as the number of compounds in that smoke, sure, it is smoke there is a lot of stuff that is in it no matter what you are burning. Think of the number of compounds left after burning some peat or apple wood, after it is all said and done you have some ash, and whatever other portion that was not water is gone with the smoke. Smoked beer is a unique style, whether done the Scotland way or the German way I think that a touch of tobacco might not be a bad thing at all. As far as actually putting refined tobacco chocked full of additives such as that found in a standard cigarette or pack of chewing tobacco in the boil, yea that is a bad idea.
 
I say do it. I likes me a good cigar every once in a while, and "tobacco" is considered a positive flavor in scotch. Better make it a strong beer though.


I think the flavor would work but the difference is that scotch doesn't get it's tobacco quality from tobacco either...it's from the casks.

My vote is to read up on oaking and peated malt and see what you can come up with from that.
I think its 100% appropriate to couple a "scotch -like" quality with a beer but no point in potentially poisoning yourself to get there.
 
I got little help from the internet at all when I and a tobacconist I know discussed the idea of making Latakia beer. The fact is, if you can smoke or chew a safe amount of tobacco, it is entirely possible to drink a safe amount. The only question is, "is a safe amount enough to taste in 5 or 6 gallons of beer?" So, if you aren't interested in Latakia beer, quit your fear mongering, and stay out of the thread.

I did it, so if you want to make Latakia beer, trust me, it has been done, and is great! Read on.

I assumed, first, that consumption of tobacco gives you 6 to 10 times the nicotine dose as compared with smoking. I also assumed that although nicotine is a form of vitamin B3, that the yeast would not consume it.

Therefore, I calculated that if I put 28g(1oz) of latakia in 23L(6USgal) of beer it would equal to around 0.4g of tobacco per bottle. The average tobacco pipe holds 3 to 5g of tobacco per bowl, so 0.4g is surely safe. It is not just the math that is safe, I have drank two bottles without any perceptible buzz.

I first tested 2 bottles of an ESB that had already been made, just to see if the flavor was enough, or too much. I decided to make a stout that was really sweet because a couple of us thought that a high final gravity beer with a lot of caramel notes would balance well with the smoke.

It ended up sweeter than expected, and the alcohol ended up lower consequently; I am more than pleased with the final product and will make it again, maybe a little less sweetness next time, probably doing 5 gallons with the same grain bill, and doing the starch conversion at 154F. I just used the hops I had; Fuggles might be the one next time.

The Recipe: Latakia Stout (6gal)
7.5lbs 2-row Malt
2.2lbs Special B
0.75lbs Chocolate Malt
1lb Roasted Barley
1lb Scottish Cut Oats
Wyeast 1084 - Irish Ale
1.6oz Hersbrucker 3.1% 60 min
0.3% Liberty 3.3% 60min
1.6oz Hersbrucker 3.1% 20 min
1.0oz Hersbrucker 3.1% 5 min
Mash in 160F, hold 1 hr, heat to 170F, drain, sparge with 178F water.
Cool, pitch, once fermentation is doing well, add 1.0oz Latakia.
OG 1.043
FG 1.020
alc/vol 3.1%
SRM = 42
IBU = 35
 
For what it is worth.... I have stored pelletized hops in my 2-row before, for a couple days before brew-day.

It's makes the mash smell like hops. I couldn't see why not putting a satchel of old red into a bucket of grain, keeping the tobacco in the foil and not touching the malt.... or perhaps allowing hops and tobacco to sit along side each other in a sealed container, not touching, but exchanging scent to co-mingle.
 
I actually thought about this as well. Tobacco as a spice might not be bad if used correctly. I would not know how you would go about effectively releasing the right amount of flavor without over doing it. The key would also be finding a tobacco that would impart the right flavor. I would think cigar leaf would work the best as a condiment in a brew. Pipe tobacco, unless natural, is topped to produce nice aromas when burned but does not taste like it smells. I would do experiments on this if I could get some one gAllon recipes. I would start off using a quarter ounce steeped in warm water for 5 mins.
 
I thought this thread would be about pairing different pipe tobaccos with different beers, not actually putting the tobacco in the beer.
 
Please don't. This has been kicked around in the cocktail community for several years. Here's a post from a bartender on the subject, including several comments from customers who had bad experience with tobacco infusions: http://www.artofdrink.com/mobi/article/nicotini-tobacco-infusions

An alternative might be Perique Liqueur de Tabac. The brilliant chemist Ted Breaux was hired to make a safe tobacco spirit. If you were going to add tobacco flavor to something, I'd use that. At least that way, if you get ill, you can sue someone. :)
 
Radegast,

Sorry, but It has already been done, by me; see above. I explain the dosage calculations and give the exact recipe. All six gallons are gone because they have been consumed by about 12 different people. Most people enjoyed it. Latakia flavor was superb, maybe could have been decreased. On occasion I had more than one in a sitting. NOBODY GOT SICK. It was all natural and didn't require anything made by a chemist. The only thing I would do differently would be to put it in later in the brew, because the addition of the latakia slowed down the fermentation and it ended up sweeter than I wanted.
 
I made a lovely tobacco brew, It was a hefewizen and when i got to bottling i sent my 2 year old daughter out and told her to find as many cigerette butts as she could find and before bottling them up we just dropped a but in each beer! It turned out nice because some had that lovely menthol flavor, or marlboro reds really kicked it up a notch:p Just kidding this idea sounds like a very bad expierement and just the thought of it kind of made me throw up in my mouth a little bit.
 
Radegast,

Sorry, but It has already been done, by me; see above. I explain the dosage calculations and give the exact recipe. All six gallons are gone because they have been consumed by about 12 different people. Most people enjoyed it. Latakia flavor was superb, maybe could have been decreased. On occasion I had more than one in a sitting. NOBODY GOT SICK. It was all natural and didn't require anything made by a chemist. The only thing I would do differently would be to put it in later in the brew, because the addition of the latakia slowed down the fermentation and it ended up sweeter than I wanted.

Arsenic is all natural too. Just because something is "all natural" doesn't mean it can't hurt you.
 
Okay, I'm just a little curious. The person that started this thread said he was going to make up a batch and let everyone know how it worked out. He hasn't posted since June 2007. Is this an indication the experiment didn't go as well as he hoped? Hope he survived it......
 
Im not a doctor or anything but best case i would think would be a night of vometing, and possibly a trip to the emergency room.
 
To achieve a pipe like flavor, I might use Sam Calagione's Extreme Homebrewing recipe "Smokin' Cherry Bomb". While I haven;t had it myself, it sounds like it would add some fruitiness similar to some pipe tobacco and smokiness.

http://books.google.com/books?id=9a...onepage&q=smoked cherry bomb homebrew&f=false


Don't want cherries? Sub them for your favorite fruity pipe flavor or drop them all together.

Just how I would approach the topic
 
5 bunches of grapes that are red
20 bunches of grapes that are not
3 pinches of cherry tobacco
--------------------------------------------
Red wine yeast of your choosing

When you drink this wine with a cigar your spirits increase.
You will feel similar joys when a pipe is smoked with your wine.
Refrain from chewing tobacco and drinking this wine.
Cease and desist all forms of cigarette consumption wine or none.

You may feel the need to share this wine with others.
You will mention my name when they thank you for this.
You will smile at them and mention my name when they ask for the recipe.
If they do not thank you, you have not mentioned my name hard enough.

Going beyond pinches five will spell your death.
Learn your counting well, and enjoy, for you have and I have crafted Red Cherry Tobywine or Cherry Red Tobywine for short. If you get stuck just call my name.

-Alexander
 
from what i rememberfrom working with eliquid for electronic vaping kit. the glycerine we use doesnt take nicotine from the tobacco well without serious work. the nicotine has to be added from annother source. maybe the tecniques and steps there could be used or just find a tobbcco flavour you enjoy and use the flavour as some are very close to a nice tobbaco
 
I smoke a pipe. English blends. I've considered tossing some latakia into a porter or stout. It sounds better to me than 99% of the stuff that other brewers add to their beer.

I'm a big fan of latakia, too. Latakia is made by smoke curing the leaves over a fire of Mediterranean brush and herbs, so I bet the best way to get that flavor would be to smoke some malt over a similar fire. I'm not exactly sure what the fuel is, but you might be able to find that info.
 
Not again...these things need to die, before someone on here does.

This is a NEW reference on the dangers of doing this...it's geared towards bartenders, and really folks like us, who want to play with tobacco in alcohol. Read it.

I'll even make it easy for you, since it's SO IMPORTANT that you understand this.

We've recently become aware of a surge in the number of bartenders creating homemade tobacco spirit infusions and bitters - most of which simply involve leaving a cigar in a bottle of spirit. Often, these are presented in competitions, but we've also seen five-star hotel bars with such products on the back-bar and are generally conscious of it becoming more widespread. It worried us a bit, thinking about the potential risks of toxicity in such a concentrated form, and then we discovered that Darcy S. O'Neil, a molecular pathologist and occasional bartender, already shared our concerns.

For some reason bartenders are drawn to the idea of infusing spirits with tobacco. After I made a statement that "tobacco infusions are a bad idea", I've had a number of people ask me why. The simple answer is toxicity, but that answer doesn't provide the details intelligent bartenders are looking for, so I've expanded on the question. If you are thinking about doing a tobacco infusion, this is a must-read article. If you go to bars where a tobacco-infused cocktail might show up on the menu, this is a must-read article.

Having worked in labs for a good part of my life, I've been subjected to enough safety training and accident reviews to have a healthy respect for the dangers that lurk below seemingly innocuous things.

A couple of days a week I work in a histology lab where I spend my time preparing tissue samples for researchers. One of the pieces of equipment we use is a microtome, which cuts sections of tissue as fine as 3 microns. For perspective, a human hair is roughly 100 microns. The trick to cutting things so fine is to use a really sharp blade. Now, no matter how many times we tell people to use extreme caution when cutting, there are always a few nasty cuts. It takes almost no pressure for the blade to slice through flesh resulting in a blood, stitches and a lot of paper work.

To date I have not cut myself, but there have been a few close calls. Please don't tell me to knock on wood. The reason I've avoided carving up my digits is because I'm keenly aware of the dangers. I'm almost robotic in my use of the safety devices and my reactions when something goes wrong.

So what does this have to do with infusing spirits with tobacco? Well, it just demonstrates that no matter what position you are in, you must be aware of the dangers and take precautions. In the case of tobacco infusions, the nicotine in tobacco is extremely toxic. To compare, here are some numbers for other well know toxins:

Lethal Dose
Arsenic 200mg
Strychnine 75mg
Hydrogen Cyanide 60mg
Nicotine 60mg

You are reading that correctly: nicotine is just as toxic as hydrogen cyanide (HCN). Considering HCN was used for chemical warfare purposes and suicide pills, the fact that nicotine is equally as toxic should give a person pause before incorporating it into a drink. Also, even if you don't hit the toxic levels, there are still serious side-effects with lower doses.

Let's do some maths to understand where a tobacco-infused spirit can go wrong.

A single cigarette contains 10 to 20mg of nicotine, but a smoker only gets a fraction of that amount, typically 2 to 3mg of nicotine with the other portion being burned away or not inhaled, but still a buzz worthy dose. In a liquid extraction or infusion process the yield of nicotine will be much higher.

Let's say you take 5 grams of tobacco, with 15mg of nicotine per gram, and infuse that into 250ml of vodka. That means that each 30ml (one ounce) of infused vodka will have roughly 9mg of nicotine. Even though it's not at the toxic level, if someone were to do a shot, they'd get a seriously objectionable rush. A few rounds of cocktails made with this infusion would lead to bad results.

The second problem is that non-smokers have no tolerance for nicotine. I don't smoke, but I know many people that do and they always talk about the rush they had when they started smoking, many of them said they felt ill after their first cigarette. Let's say that's only 2mg of nicotine, if a non-smoker sucked back a cocktail with 3 or 4mg of nicotine it would probably be a very unpleasant experience.

Then of course there is the compounded hangover of nicotine and alcohol withdrawal. Probably not fun.

I trust bartenders to make Manhattans and Margaritas, and many times they can't even get those simple recipes right. Knowing that, would you trust them enough to dose your cocktail with hydrogen cyanide? How about the equally toxic nicotine? Unlike other things, I find that nicotine is a bit too toxic to work with safely and I'm apprehensive at the thought of drinking tobacco-infused cocktails. Even if they aren't lethal, there are still the unpleasant side-effects I can live without.

As for the concept of cold-smoking a spirit (i.e. infusing the smoke into the spirit) this is a safer approach, since the nicotine levels will be lower. I have tried a sample of this before and the end result can be quite harsh. The flavour was reminiscent of a cigarette butt in beer bottle. Yes, back before smoking was banned in bars, I was unfortunate enough to take a swig of a bottle of beer that someone used as an ashtray. You can't forget that flavour. It makes me wonder why people would even want to drink a Nicotini.

If you operate a bar, or work in at one, I'd say you definitely need to consider liability issues if you are serving tobacco infused cocktails. There have been a number of questions about making a distillate with tobacco and whether the nicotine would distill over. As far as I can tell if you made an infusion of tobacco and distilled it, the nictine would not be in the final product. The boiling point of nicotine is 247C so it's unlikely to pass over during distillation.

This article is reproduced with kind permission of Darcy S. O'Neil who first published it earlier this year on his www.artofdrink.com blog

Hot steep/cold steep it doesn't matter. Read what I posted above. We've dealt with this before on here, that's why I keep the info handy, for when someone gets this idea in their head..

I grew up in a time when just about everyone with a garden had a jar of cigarettes in water. Back in the 70's it was thought to be a good idea for gardeners who had to deal with aphids to take a bunch of cigarettes and steep them in water in a mason jar, and whenever you had aphids to spray some of that on the plant. All the grown ups had these jars of brown liquid usually up on the top shelf of the garage out of reach. I was a kid was told to keep away, but you know how some kids are, you tell them and they then can't stay away. And even if you can't read, you can climb, and that jar is mighty tempting.

A kid in my town died from drinking some.
 
Nicotine is toxic...so no don't do it. If you want pipe tobacco flavors use a smoked malt and a touch of stevia for residual sweetness. But certainly do not brew with pipe tobacco it will make you sick.
 
Just get some chew. Kodiak, Cope, something like that. Throw a big fat/phat dip in. Now swallow all the juice. Gut it. Tell me then if it would make a good beer.
 
I agree using tobacco in beer is problematic and/or dangerous. I'm wondering if (like me) the OP thought, "Pipe tobacco sure smells great, I wonder if there's a way to create that aroma/taste in a beer." He seemed to think the way to do that was using the tobacco itself, I am wondering has anyone tried to recreate the aroma or flavor (a rauchbier comes to mind) of pipe tobacco, but without using anything poisonous. I guess a rauchbier with vanilla and maybe whisky (or rum maybe) soaked oak? There are so many pipe tobacco flavors out there cherry, apple, etc, but when I think of it I think of that basic rich smelling, not fruity but sweet scent. Other than vanilla not sure how you'd recreate that, I think it would need to be lightly smoked so as not to overpower the other notes, but I'd sure like to give it a try at some point!
 
You know what I had the other day that was very reminiscent of pipe tobacco?

Mission fig-flavored ice cream. Maybe it's the tobaccos I've smoked, but that was all I could think of was that it tasted like my pipe tobacco smells.

I'm wondering if targeting some of those dark-fruit flavors (Special B malt, maybe some other dark crystals), in conjunction with a small amount of smoked malt, might get you in the right neighborhood.
 
You know what I had the other day that was very reminiscent of pipe tobacco?

Mission fig-flavored ice cream. Maybe it's the tobaccos I've smoked, but that was all I could think of was that it tasted like my pipe tobacco smells.

I'm wondering if targeting some of those dark-fruit flavors (Special B malt, maybe some other dark crystals), in conjunction with a small amount of smoked malt, might get you in the right neighborhood.

Interesting! So do you think get the fruit flavours out of the malt, or add actual figs to the mash, or both? That could be worth a look into. I am still very much in my infancy as a HB so just trying to nail the basics before I get too creative, but I'll keep the mission fig + creaminess idea on the background. Thanks for the idea!
 
Play around with some dark crystal malts (120°L-ish), including Special B malt. You don't need much; they're potent. Those malts will bring out some of those types of flavors. Dark Belgian candi syrup, too, might get you in that direction. You might look at some Belgian dubbel recipes for inspiration; I get some of those flavors in some of those beers. Might ramp up the Special B a little more than usual, pair it with a nice smoked malt (*not* peat; either a rauchmalt or maybe a cherrywood-smoked malt). Add those to a base beer recipe with a strong malt profile. Minimal hop flavor/aroma, clean yeast. A bigger beer, something that will finish a little on the sweet side. That's be how I'd approach it.
 
I've actually had several nicotine/tobacco infused cocktails at some of the new mixologist style bars and I have to admit, it added plenty of flavor and a cool buzz. Tobacco tastes similar to bitter raisins which adds a really cool depth to the flavor spectrum of drinks. I would add this in secondary and monitor closely. I honestly think that you can create a spectacular cider or beer with tobacco. It is an acquired taste just like an old Scotch or Bourbon. Give it a shot you could either go down in flames or in history as a genius!!!
 

Latest posts

Back
Top