Anyone have a good carrot cake beer recipe?

I went to my local winter beerfest this past weekend and this brewery from northern michigan had some awesome beer flavors www.shortsbrewing.com Anyways they had a carrot cake beer that tasted just like carrot cake which was amazing. I was wondering if anyone here has attempted and successfully created a carrot cake beer before? Im not advanced enough to do all grain batches so an extract would be best for me.

BTW..their key lime pie beer was amazing also

I have not done this, but I made carrot cupcakes this weekend.
The main flavors:
-allspice
-carrot
-sweet
-cream cheese
-walnuts

My best guess would be a nutty brown ale recipe with a high mash temp and/or lots of crystal/caramel malts, allspice late boil and/or secondary, shredded carrots in the mash and/or secondary, and a little lactic acid or lactobacillus to get that cream cheese tartness.

Keep in mind this is an armchair guess, but maybe a good starting point.

im not into doing mash's yet i just started brewing so most of my stuff has been extract kits but i wanna step outside my comfort lines a little hopefully finding someone who has done an "extract" kit carrot cake beer

The allspice is the biggest flavor contributor. you could try sprinkling some into a commercial nutty brown ale and see where that gets you. Same for the lactic acid, you'd need to experiment to find the right amount.

You can also steep some honey malt to get more sweetness.

You could toss the shredded carrots into seconday, just make sure you sanitize them somehow, maybe boiling water.

I was thinking about using a basic belgium ale extract kit, steeping in some 2row grains and putting roughly 6lbs of shredded carrots into a muslin bag and leaving them in for the entire boiling period. It would be interesting to see this works out done some reasearch online but cant find any good instructions.

Gordzilla said:

I was thinking about using a basic belgium ale extract kit, steeping in some 2row grains and putting roughly 6lbs of shredded carrots into a muslin bag and leaving them in for the entire boiling period. It would be interesting to see this works out done some reasearch online but cant find any good instructions.

Click to expand...

Yeah but carrot cake is a misnomer as it usually isn't the carrots that give the cake its flavor. Its more about the spices and how they are counteracted the the sweet tang of the frosting. The carrots probably provide moisture to the cake, more than anything...

I don't have any good ideas, other than to say that pulptastic's suggestion may be more on track (i.e. using spices) than your boiling carrots idea.

i was gonna boil the carrots mostly for the color effect i still plan on adding the spices like referenced above, to get that frosting flavoring do you thinking adding lactose would be enough or should i add something else with it to really bring the frosting taste out?

The lactic acid will add tartness, you would probably want to add some sweetness. This is why I recommend steeping some honey malt. Boiling some carrots would add color but may also add some cooked carrot flavor, not sure if that would be good.

2 row should be mashed, not steeped. Crystal/cara malts like honey malt can be steeped to add flavor and color.

Gordlizilla, am working on a Carrot cake recipe myself for a family member's 60th birthday recipe that wants Carrot Cake for his birthday cake every year. Here is what I am looking at....

7 lbs light LME
1 lb 2-Row
8 oz. crystal 60
8 oz. special roast
8 oz. maltodextrin
1 lb flaked oats
8 oz raisins, put in blender with 1 cup wort then added to boil in final 5 min.
12 oz lactose added at bottling
1 oz. irish moss 10 min.
5 lb. carrots, peeled, shredded, and boiled covered. Then continue boiling uncovered to reduce to a syrup. Add to secondary
1.5 cups spiced Makers Mark with vanilla beans, cinn sticks, nutmeg, allspice, 1/2 oz ginger added to secondary

Let me know if you have already done a recipe. Would love to know what you went with.

Pulptastic - what do you view as the difference between mashing and steeping? I always viewed mashing as steeping with grains with diastatic power to convert sugars with malts with little to no diastatic power. Thanks.

This sounds really good. It's going on my future brews for sure. Not sure if I'll try to get the frosting flavor down, or just serve it with slice of cheese cake.

Also, did a google search, and found the following recipe that someone won a homebrew competition with.

http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10921

The guy Wayne who posted that recipe makes/ creates some darn good stuff. I've tried a oatmeal cookie beer recipe of his, very good stuff. I feel must disclose, I know nothing about carrot cake beer. I guess I'm not really a fan of carrot cake either.

Best of luck

Well, brewed it up today. Everything went smoothly. In a week comes the spiced makers. I'll let you know how it goes.

contemplating making a batch of this for a friend.

sfrisby, how did it turn out?

Basline,

It was a good beer, but not was I was shooting for. I went with 5 cups of carrot juice vs real carrots. The test batch of both tasted nearly identical and juice was much easier to deal with. The carrot flavor came through and was subtle which was just fine. The spices were there, but weak. I thought it would show through more. The bourbon wasn't there at all. I was suprised. I have done bourbon barrel beers before. Don't know if the absence of wood was the difference or what.I am not sure what I would do differently. Now, going back to the beginning of my post, it was still a very good beer, just thought it would have a spicier pop.

Recipe looks solid, though 12oz of lactone is a LOT... so if you're not looking for the beer to be overly sweet I'd avoid using quite that much, though I haven't brewed this recipe.

The only other thing I'd throw out there is to consider caramelizing your own sugar and add that as well (heat it in a frying pan over med-lo heat turning over constantly til it browns, just be careful not burn it)

12oz is a fair bit but it's not THAT much. Lactose actually has very little sweetness compared to other sugars, and I've had beers with 1lb per 5gal that weren't even particularly sweet.

cool, yah like I said I haven't brewed your specific recipe, but my uncle did a breakfast stout with a pound of lactose that was insanely sweet. I'm planning on brewing something like this in the fall but I haven't made up my mind just how sweet I want it yet, so thanks for throwing some numbers and honest results out there.

Here's an All Grain recipe that I've come up with:

13 lb of Maris Otter
1 lb 12 oz of Crystal 40
8 oz of Victory
4 oz of Aromatic
1 oz of East Kent Gold (EKG) @ 60 min (90 min boil)
.50 oz EKG @ 30 min
.50 oz EKG @ 10 min
8 oz of Raisin puree @ 20 min
8 oz of Raisin puree @ 10 min
WLP 002 English Ale
1 cinnamon stick in secondary for 4-7 days
1 vanilla bean in secondary for 4-7 days

what do you all think of this recipe

Where are the carrots!?


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