I added heavy cream to my wort!

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How will this beer turn out?

  • Move aside Sam Adams theres a new beer in town!

  • Strange, not objectionable, what the heck am I drinking?

  • Well its not harmful, maybe the frat house down the street wants it.

  • Cheese-beer induced food poisoning


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thejakester

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After feeling pretty cocky drinking my delicious belgin triple and happliy seeing my first brown ale coming along well I decided to take some more liberty with my third ever batch.

Maybe a brief moment of insanity took me, or maybe I was simply blinded to the possibility of falure by my earler success, but I began a strange and new brew. It was a bannanas foster ale, with, you guessed it, 8lbs or so of delicous bannanas foster added to the wort that began as a summer ale. Then I decided to add some cream flavor!l not with lactose, Naa with a half gallon of heavy cream.

It tastes amasing!!!! However, I am scared I am only two fermentations away from poisoning my room mates with some strange banana flavored beer-cheese hybrid.

Will the cream go bad? It was boiled for about 45minates then only touched sanitised surfaces, so it might be ok right?

Finally, how big a blunder did I make guys? What is going to happen?
 
From what I understand, milk/cream will spoil and be dangerous. If you are interested in saving it maybe you could pitch some lactobacillus and ferment the milk and the malt. You will have a sour funky banana. You will also likely need to ferment it for much longer. If you are lucky it may taste like sour cream in your beer. I am interested to hear some more educated views on this. Good luck!
 
Congratulations, you've made high octane kefir. Make sure to keep it refrigerated.
 
High octane kefir! Sounds delicious to me. Anyway it comes out I'm drinking a pint, if, for nothing other then stuborness. ill keep you guys updated on its progress, I tasted some foam, it wasn't bad and there were no spoiled smells or tastes, maybe the alchol will preserve the cream like in baileys.
 
What's your expected abv? Cream and alcohol is not out of the ordinary. For example, there's variations on irish cream, but that's whiskey and cream. There's also a variation on wine and cream to make chocolate cream wine, eggnog wine, and strawberry cream wine.

Based on that, it's possible a high abv beer could reach the same sterile environment.

As a regular beer, I'm not sure, but you can see if anyone has researched the lowest concentration of alcohol to cream possible before cream will go bad on its own.
 
thejakester said:
maybe the alchol will preserve the cream like in baileys.

The difference being that Baileys is 17% alcohol, has less cream, and hella preservatives.
 
Expected adv is 8.5 I have been thinking about tossing a few lbs of brown sugar in to up that number. It has been fermenting for 4 days now no signs of spoilage so far!
 
All this beer blogging got me curious, I just lifted the lid and checked the beer, it has a dense foam on top, it smells like bannanas and beer, tastes kind of good, no sour notes to report. Didn't bother extracting any liquid yet.
 
So you boiled 8 pounds of bananas foster (including the ice cream?) + 1/2 gallon of heavy cream for 45 minutes with your wort? Interesting.
 
One time, I left some milk out of the fridge overnight. Curdled, sour, and spoiled. Fermented milk isn't something I'd drink on purpose!

(I don't like keffir, and the yogurt I eat is lacto fermented).

It won't hurt you, though, just taste terrible.
 
So you boiled 8 pounds of bananas foster (including the ice cream?) + 1/2 gallon of heavy cream for 45 minutes with your wort? Interesting.

No ice cream, just heavy cream. It tasted really good when I tried some wort. I used 7 lbs of light malt and cascade hops along with some lightly roasted barley.
 
At a minimum, I'd anticipate having to do a lot of skimming to get all the milkfat out. There's gonna be a ton of it.
 
CastleHollow said:
At a minimum, I'd anticipate having to do a lot of skimming to get all the milkfat out. There's gonna be a ton of it.

The milk fat might not ever separate. Commercial cream contains carrageenan, which is an emulsifier.
 
I just tasted some, it tastes pretty good, no racid smell or tastes at all, trust me, i was looking for them. I added some spices, 20oz of dried banannas, and 2lbs of dark brown sugar. That should boost taste and alchol volume! I gave up any chance of head retention when I added all the fats and oils in the cream.
 
I think DFH, not SA, would be a better brewery to compete with when brewing a banana cream ale! At least DFH might actually try this :D
 
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