Wort brined turkey?

OK, I know this is an odd question, but I have been brining my Thanksgiving turkeys for years, and usually use a gallon of apple juice, a gallon of water, salt, brown sugar,pepper and a bunch of herbs. I am wondering if anyone has used unfermented wort in a brine? I know the SG of apple juice is right in the 1.050 range from making hard cider, so is there any reason I should not try using a gallon of unhopped wort instead of the apple juice?

I am planning to try this on a test turkey the weekend before Thanksgiving.

Try it and post the results. I also wonder how it would be with some finished beer.

Well if you have a recipe that has wort that tastes like it would go good on turkey give it a try.
I wouldn't wait till Thanksgiving to try it though. I hate to gamble thanksgiving dinner on something that different than what you've done before.

I've never done it with turkey, but I've marinated steaks in (store bought) beer before. Alcohol does a really good job of denaturing the proteins and tenderizing the meat, but it won't really increase the juiciness the way a brine will.

Great idea, I'm also curious in how this turns out. I would probably only do a breast just to play it safe but either way you really got the wheels turning in my head now.

Wort brine then on the smoker for a few hours... Droooooooooooool

Please update us with what you do and how it turns out, as well as cooking method. I thought deep fried turkey was the shiznit, this wort brine and smoking it could top that.

I've marinated a few turkey's in beer. Last year I used some homebrewed scotch ale, a couple onions, some garlic, lots of salt, and some shitake mushrooms. Marinated the turkey in the brine for 48 hours before cooking it. It came out amazing!.

I'd be worried about too much sweetness coming through with unfermented wort! Might be worth a try though.

will you add salt also? doesn't a brine *need* salt or is the osmotic potential more important, which you get with any dissolved solids?? anyways i'm not gonna lie to you i am excited by the sound of this. i always always always brine my turkeys (as does any sane individual); salt, sugar, spices (juniper berry, bay leaf, black pepper, onion)

It sounds interesting - but I'm with dinnerstick on this one. Looks like there ate two ideas here: 1) Brine using beer , and 2) Brine using wort. I'm not sure how effective the wort would be as a brine without added salt or acid (lemon juice, etc) of some kind. Unfermented wort might make a really nice glaze if you boiled it down to a syrup. Not sure.

dinnerstick said:

will you add salt also? doesn't a brine *need* salt or is the osmotic potential more important, which you get with any dissolved solids?? anyways i'm not gonna lie to you i am excited by the sound of this. i always always always brine my turkeys (as does any sane individual); salt, sugar, spices (juniper berry, bay leaf, black pepper, onion)

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I too think/thought it is the salt that makes the brining work.

How about making a standard sugar/salt brine and using DME instead of the sugar?

He is subbing wort/beer for the apple juice, so I'm sure he plans to use all the other ingredients (salt, etc) with the wort.

Golddiggie said:

Try it and post the results. I also wonder how it would be with some finished beer.

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It's great with beer! I use beer in my "regular" turkey brine all the time.

It's still the same, with the onions, carrots, salt, all spice, etc, but I use beer instead of apple cider and boil that up.

I don't know about wort, though. It might be really good but I don't think I'd try it. Wort is so sweet to me, and I don't like sweet brines.

Now I want to see recipes so that I can give it a try.

A brine is one of the easy and quick jobs in getting ready for Thanksgiving. To me Thanksiving seems like a bad time to take a uick job, making a brine and turining it into a a few hours of work by making a wort.

Thanks for the replies. To clarify, I am planning to basically replace a lot of the sugar I usually get from apple juice with a 1.050 base malt wort.
I will be using salt as always.
I may just use DME to make the wort.
I am doing a test turkey - small about 8 lbs. On Sunday before Thanksgiving that I will serve to my homebrew buddies as taste panel.
I am going to cook it in my Big Easy infrared oilless turkey fryer(this is a new toy, I usually fry in oil but got tired of the expense and mess)

Here is my current recipe:
1 gallon 1.050 2-row wort (replaces 1 gallon local pressed apple juice/cider)
1.5 gallons Water
4 Tablespoons Fresh Rosemary Leaves
5 cloves Garlic, Minced
1-1/2 cup Kosher Salt
1 cup Brown Sugar
3 Tablespoons Peppercorns
5 whole Bay Leaves
Peel Of Three Large Oranges

How did it go?

JonM said:

How about making a standard sugar/salt brine and using DME instead of the sugar?

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I came into this thread to post exactly this. :rockin: Oh wow, also just noticed this thread is 2 years old. But hey, turkey time is comin

It was fine,juicy as usual with a decent brine. It was hard to tell the difference from my regular brine. Basically maltose instead of fructose. Its been a while, and only tried it once so not much to report.