Caffeinated HomeBrew

I searched around and couldn't find anything about using caffeine in beer other than various coffee drinks, which is not what i'm going for. I want a beer to start off a big night with, giving a good caffeine boost to get things going.

The FDA is moving towards banning the use of caffeine in commercially produced alcoholic beverages, and several of the big brands (Sparks, Tilt) have already changed their recipes to remove caffeine. What i'm not looking for is responses about warnings for my health or admonishments, rather i'm looking for thoughts, ideas, or any suggestions from the community on how to pull this off. I never liked those alcoholic energy drinks because the flavor was atrocious and I haven't had one in years, but still love the idea of the alcohol/energy combination.

From what I've read, Red bull has 80mg of caffeine per 8.3oz can, a shot of espresso has around 100mg, and 7oz of coffee has anywhere from 65-150mg or so depending on the bean type and process. I'm looking to make a beer with 100mg or so of caffeine per 12oz, without affecting the flavor much. My current plan is to purify the caffeine in no-doz pills (200 mg each, here's one method -http://www.instructables.com/id/Extracting-almost-pure-Caffeine-from-Caffeine-Pi), dissolve that powder into a thin ethanol solution and pour that into my bottling bucket when I add the priming sugar.

I'm thinking I'll use an IPA, since I've heard caffeine at those concentrations has a mildly acidic/bitter taste that I'll need to deal with, so maybe a nice american IPA with the 3C's and some Simcoe. 7-8% abv, 80-90 IBU should do the trick

Any thoughts/suggestions/experience anyone has had with this kinda thing?

Thanks!!!

Actually, I think I'll bottle a couple bottles without it first, then add the appropriate amount of caffeine tincture for the remainder, so I can do a taste comparison and see if it makes a difference.

Very interesting. I can't help much but I'd be interested in the same thing. However, I'd be reluctant to caffeinate the entire 5 gallons. I only hit the town needing red bull every now and then.

Actually now that I'm thinking about it, why not just pop some no doze while drinking an ipa? Although that doesn't sound as fun, it's basically the same thing.

Haha yeah, that's a very good point jmo... as with pretty much everything else I do with home brewing, its really just to see if I can! And though I don't personally care, caffeinated beverages have less stigma than taking a pill... and its more novel this way.

I may just make a small amount of caffeine/alcohol solution (say, an ounce of 20% ethanol/80% water with 2 no doze pills dissolved in it, then split it into 4 parts and add straight to the bottle. That way i'll be taking a little less risk with the experiment.

rickfrothingham said:

Actually, I think I'll bottle a couple bottles without it first, then add the appropriate amount of caffeine tincture for the remainder, so I can do a taste comparison and see if it makes a difference.

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A tincture makes a lot of sense. You can both guage the taste impact, as well as the strength.

You might also think about using some herbs like yerba mate or guarana, to give you the pep you are looking for. There is a yerba mate beer recipe here, although I've not tried it.

Good luck!

a heavy percentage coffee stout?

Meh, I drink beer for the exact opposite reason I drink coffee. I don't get it.

klyph said:

Meh, I drink beer for the exact opposite reason I drink coffee. I don't get it.

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Yeah, I don't expect most people on here to understand the draw of the caffeine/alcohol combination, but I love it. If I want a big Friday night out after a long week of work, its just the thing I need to make it happen. Its just that Joose is so damn terrible... what i'm inventing here is the classy version of Joose; only meant for that 0.5% of the population that would ever want it, but perfectly awesome for us 0.5%.

I'm going to try adding the 100mg level of caffeine to a standard pale ale to see how it affects the flavor first... maybe a SNPA or something. Then I can plan accordingly. I may rely on the caffeine to provide some of the up front bitterness, letting me reduce my bittering hops a bit and do a lot of late-hopping flavor/aroma hops instead for a good cover up flavor if necessary.

This might be interesting

http://www.partyenhancers.com/pure-caffeine-powder.php

Razorbrew said:

This might be interesting

http://www.partyenhancers.com/pure-caffeine-powder.php

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Hmmm, yeah that sounds VERY interesting! I don't have a scale that works down to that granularity, so i'm probably going to stick with refining my no-doz tabs so i can get better dose control.

why don't you figure your average "dose" by taking the "recommended" amount of caffeine on the no-doz bottle, and seeing if its enough to keep you more awake.

Once you have the average amount you need, figure out how many bottles of beer you want it in (like 2 12 oz bottles) and do your math from there (say 2 tablets in 2 bottles, and you are bottling 24 bottles, so 24 tablets) and add that to your priming solution.

t

Keep in mind the bitterness, it may affect the IBUs.

Search for "Mountain Brew". Instead of water, use Mt. Dew in your wort. From the data I saw online, Mt. Dew has about 550mg caffeine per gallon.

I had the idea of kicking that up even more with a few cans of Monster energy drink.. They make a tasty citrus one.

Bonsai and klyph - I've played with nodoz and redbull enough know I want about 100mg/12oz, so I'll just measure out the 200mg nodoz accordingly. Might use the caffeine powder if I want to make a big batch though, to save on the time refining the nodoz (see first post). As for bitterness, see my previous post, I'm gonna test with a mid hoppy pale ale like sierra nevada, and shift my hop schedule towards the end of the brew time as I see fit to hit the right bitterness level.

Gordon - if I made it with mountain dew or monster, I think it'll turn out a lot closer to sparks, or joose, which is exactly what I don't want haha.
I

rickfrothingham said:

Gordon - if I made it with mountain dew or monster, I think it'll turn out a lot closer to sparks, or joose, which is exactly what I don't want haha.
I

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Supposedly it just tastes like regular beer with some citrus according to a few reviews I've seen. Mountain Dew is a citrus drink after all, if you brew a style that would go well with it, I don't see why it wouldn't work. And yes, I think Sparks is nasty!

Dr_Gordon_Freeman said:

Supposedly it just tastes like regular beer with some citrus according to a few reviews I've seen. Mountain Dew is a citrus drink after all, if you brew a style that would go well with it, I don't see why it wouldn't work. And yes, I think Sparks is nasty!

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Yeah i suppose that makes sense... the yeast probably ferments off almost all of the sugars in the mountain dew, unlike sparks which is surely pasteurized/filtered, then is carbonated and has a ton of sugar added. It might be a little tricky to figure out my grain bill since there will be a substantial amount of sugar already...

I actually do understand the caffeine/alcohol combo. I know it might not be the healthiest thing in the world, but it usually does put me in the perfect mood to go out and socialize. W/ that being said, I actually like the taste of red bull...so I doubt I'd ever try something like this but to each his own! I say go for it just to say you did!

sparks orange and a few others.. joose, etc are okay. most just suck.. too much sugar and crap.

Just drink a beer and eat the world's first all-natural performance enhancing meat snack at the same time....

www.perkyjerky.com

(not affiliated with this product but found it funny)

Forrest

Haha i love the perky jerky idea, i could get into that

I avoid caffeine like the plague. I hate coffee, only allow myself 2 or three sodas a week, and then it's usually a caffeine-free root beer, and won't go near an Excedrin no matter how bad my headache is. No way on earth I'd put some in my beer.

Bernie Brewer said:

I avoid caffeine like the plague. I hate coffee, only allow myself 2 or three sodas a week, and then it's usually a caffeine-free root beer, and won't go near an Excedrin no matter how bad my headache is. No way on earth I'd put some in my beer.

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Any particular reason? i love the stuff

caffeine can be toxic to yeast at high doses. This paper (http://www.springerlink.com/content/fq7656v10j018209/) used 20 millimolar caffeine as a toxic dose for a different yeast (S. pombe). That converts to 115mg/oz. You are planning to use 1/12 of that concentration, so it should be fine.

But do make sure the caffeine is well dissolved. If there are un-dissolved chunks of no-doz at the bottom of the bottle, flocc'ed yeast at the bottom of the bottle may experience much higher local concentrations, maybe speeding autolysis. In addition, you would get very different doses of caffeine in different bottles if it isn't well mixed.

In my opinion, caffeine tastes more astringent than bitter. I imagine its flavor hiding better under the chalky dry tannic astringency of a dry irish stout.

There is a local beer in South Carolina called Mobius Beer. Its a mid-light bodied amber ale I believe. This one however has taurine, ginseng, caffeine, and vitamin B1. I'm sure its all in small doses, and it is very tasty. I can't find much info on it however and I've only had it on 2 occasions.

Retroviridae said:

caffeine can be toxic to yeast at high doses. This paper (http://www.springerlink.com/content/fq7656v10j018209/) used 20 millimolar caffeine as a toxic dose for a different yeast (S. pombe). That converts to 115mg/oz. You are planning to use 1/12 of that concentration, so it should be fine.

But do make sure the caffeine is well dissolved. If there are un-dissolved chunks of no-doz at the bottom of the bottle, flocc'ed yeast at the bottom of the bottle may experience much higher local concentrations, maybe speeding autolysis. In addition, you would get very different doses of caffeine in different bottles if it isn't well mixed.

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Wow thanks, thats really good information... I will be bottle conditioning these so i wouldn't want to hurt that yeast! I think at this point I plan to bottle the first 4 gallons as a regular IPA, then save the last gallon as my caffeinated IPA... that's equivalent to ~11 12oz bottles, so if i extract the caffeine from 8 200mg no-doz pills then i'll hit 145mg per bottle, or 12mg/oz.

I'll be extracting the caffeine into a couple ounces of 50/50 water/ethanol, so i'll be able to ensure that it is very thoroughly dissolved and sanitized before mixing in. That will also bump the ABV up on those bottles by about 0.8% according to my calculations, but i'll figure that part out at bottling time

Retroviridae said:

In my opinion, caffeine tastes more astringent than bitter. I imagine its flavor hiding better under the chalky dry tannic astringency of a dry irish stout.

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I agree it is a bit astringent too, though i didnt find it to be a problem in these concentrations - I dissolved roughly 3/4 of a nodoz pill into a 12oz green flash west coast IPA using the technique described before, and I couldn't tell much difference at all other than bitterness seeming a bit more harsh. There's so much snappy hop flavor in that beer it doesn't seem to matter much.

So as an update, I was on my way back from Chicago a couple nights ago and whipped this label up on the plane on Photoshop. I think it captures the essence of the caffeinated IPA attitude pretty decently...
http://tweetphoto.com/9313723

I made a thread about it in the label section with a couple variations on it, so for the purpose of keeping this thread recipe oriented, i'd appreciate keeping label related comments there: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f46/pale-ale-ipa-label-design-scheme-several-versions-158669/

update 2: I just racked the IPA that i'm going to use as the vehicle for this experiment to the secondary and added my dry hops. Tastes great at this point and its got a nice strong resiny character... should get the job done.

here's the recipe for the batch - which i'm splitting into 4 gallons of "Alpha Dog" normal IPA and 1 gallon of "Bold as Love" Caffeinated IPA during bottling
http://hopville.com/recipe/155177/american-ipa-recipes/alpha-dog---bold-as-love

Buzz Beer: Stay up and get drunk all over again!
-Drew Carey Show

Thanks for all the tips guys!

I cracked open the first bottles of this over the weekend - it worked like a charm! We all had a great night without having to slog through any cans of JOOSE or knock back jaagerbombs.

The recipe I used for the IPA was a real hop bomb (It really split the difference between a few clone recipes I found for Green Flash WC IPA and Pliney the Elder) to the point that it was pretty overwhelmingly hoppy (even for me, and that says alot). I think it'll taste better once some of the hop character mellows a bit over the next few months

Recommendations/Takeaways -

1. Comparing the caffeinated vs non-caffeinated versions, i can just barely tell a difference, though if I didn't know ahead of time I wouldn't have noticed the caffeine taste. The big thing here was the purification of the caffeine with crushing the no-doz pills and using ethanol extraction. If you're going to use no-doz pills as you base then you absolutely need to extract the caffeine rather than just dumping the crushed up pills in, to get rid of all that bitter adjunct they make the pill out of! Some people have advocated using Caffeine Powder, but i think thats a little dangerous for me since i have no way to measure it accurately enough for my comfort. Using no-doz pills offers a very easy dosing standard, since each has 200mg.

2. Use something flavorful as your base beer (IPA, Stout, Barleywine) or use less caffeine per beer. I added the same amount of caffeine (150mg) to a lighter pale ale and the caffeine shown through more, though still not in a completely overwhelming way. A lighter beer would be good to use if you were going to only caffeinate it to say 40 or 50mg/12oz, in the soda range. The difference there is that at 7.5% and 150mg Caffeine this is a 1 per night beer, where a lighter alternative would be something you could drink several of for the same effect.

3. Try it at least once, its a fun experiment

Congrats!!!

Glad it came out well! Sounds like a fun experiment to put in the queue...

Thanks for keeping the thread updated!
--lexuschris

Sure thing Chris!

I feel like this is a (mostly) untapped idea in the HB community... just trying to spread the word on unique spin you can put on your beer.

rickfrothingham said:

Hmmm, yeah that sounds VERY interesting! I don't have a scale that works down to that granularity, so i'm probably going to stick with refining my no-doz tabs so i can get better dose control.

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Just now getting around to this experiment. Iordered the caffeine powder yesterday and will be adding it to a chocolate sweet coffee stout. Thinking about calling it 2 Shots in the Dark. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Let us know how it comes out! I like idea of the choc coffee stout also!

Just saw this thread now, but I made a caffeinated IPA last year similar to the original post. I got a bunch of caffeine powder from a buddy and aimed for 150mg per 12oz. beer and used it in an entire 5 gallon batch. I think it was around 7.5%, 70 IBUs and I dry hopped it pretty good.

I think my fermentation schedule went as follows:
Primary for about 2 weeks
Second with 2oz. hops (forget what I used) for 2 weeks
Third with 2oz. hops, 1.5oz. oak chips, and caffeine for 2-3 weeks

I played around with the caffeine powder a lot to see how it was affected by different tempertaures. I found that it dissolved well in hot water but if it was cooled too fast it would solidify again. So I dissolved it on a hot/stir plate, brought it to a boil, then let it cool to room temperature naturally and then dumped it into the third fermenter.

It turned out pretty well and I found the taste of the caffeine to mellow with age. If I had more than two of these it would upset my stomach, but I had a buddy drink 3-4 and he had a great time.

I'm looking to make a beer with a little pick me up I've read through the thread and I'm somewhat intimidated by the extracting of No-Doz, my chemistry is limited. Nervous I could make someone sick, and get that horrible taste and ruin the batch.

Adding the caffeine powder does anyone prefer one over the other? Less taste etc. I have a beer in primary that I would like to add this to. I figure I would wait till third racking to add it, maybe even separate or split the patch. Caf and noncaf. Has anyone done anything more recently and found success with other products?

I'm looking at adding 3 bottles of this. http://www.energyfiend.com/purecaf-the-most-potent-liquid-caffeine-money-can-buy to a five gallon batch. 4 bottles would be the equivalent to red bull.

Has anyone tried this?

Hi, if you are looking for something interesting to do that might help with this, I have a suggestion for you.

Make Gruit Ale instead of Beer. Hops has a sedative effect and you can make "Beer" without it but the recipes are really old. They do still use preservative herbs and sometimes even small amounts of hops, but if done right can make a really nicely flavored ale. Without hops, you wouldn't need as much caffeine to get the same benefit and possibly not any at all. You could also brew with some other stimulant herbs along side of the preservative ones to give you even more of a stim boost with or without the caffeine.

Here are some links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruit

http://www.hi-tm.com/Documents/Spices.html

http://www.gruitale.com/intro_en.htm