Cucumber Light Lager

I was toying with the idea of making a cucumber light lager, for my friends who like beer on the lighter side. I was wondering if anyone has used cucumber in a beer before, and if so how did it turn out, flavor wise? I'm mulling around grain and hops choices. Right now I'm mainly looking at 2 oz of cascade on for 60 min and 5 min, and .5 Oz of Sorachi Ace at 2 min or flame out. I'm not sure how much cucumber to add to the fermenter. I really want to have some nice hop aroma, but not to overpower the cucumber. Any suggestions?

Light lager with Cucumber sounds delicious; SWMBO wants a cucumber Kolsch for this summer. However, I think your hop profile would overpower the cucumber.

I personally would use something a little more Noble if I were you.

What would your hops suggestions be ? I was going with a very late sorachi ace addition because of its aroma profile. I was torn between doing a cucumber lager and a cucumber wheat, but still lagering the wheat beer to get a really light clean beer

Sorry I have no idea's for lagers, but this does sound good!

CTolino said:

What would your hops suggestions be ? I was going with a very late sorachi ace addition because of its aroma profile. I was torn between doing a cucumber lager and a cucumber wheat, but still lagering the wheat beer to get a really light clean beer

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First thing first, do whatever you want. Seriously! You're making home brew and if you want to try something, have at it. That's one of the best parts about brewing your own beer. As long as you're not entering a competition in the light lager category (which you're not), then enjoy!

Sorachi could be a good addition for sure, try it out. If you're going for a light lager, you'll overpower the beer relatively quickly so no matter what you do, I would use a light hand. Also, what kind of lager are you going for; American, German, Czech?

For your bittering hop, use something neutral like Magnum.

Flavor/Aromoa; in my mind, cucumber would pair well with a herbal hop (any of the noble hops; US or EU, Mosaic might be interesting?). To mix things up, you could also add a small amount of the super citrus hops out there to mix it up a bit (maybe push your Cascade to flameout? Citra, Amarillo). Heck, add in some coriander or fresh cilantro/parsley....

Side note, you don't have to brew a lager for a light/quaffable beer. There are plenty of great base recipes on here for light ales (3 crop cream, Miller Lite clone, etc.) that you can tweak which would fit well with your cucumber idea.

I hope you keep us posted on what you do.

It's my understanding that cucumber has a relatively delicate profile. Also, since a large portion of it is water, I would guess that it's not highly fermentable.

I am just speculating, but you could chop them up and toss them in post-fermentation or liquify some and add the juice to the beer before serving.

Before I throw out any other ideas, have you scoured the Internet and forums for information about this topic?

I was planning on going light on the sorachi ace, I was thinking 1/4-1/2 oz at flame out, maybe even toss it in the secondary. I like the citrus idea, I absolutely love Citra hops haha, I feel like that's in a lot of me brews. My brew for this weekend is an ipa, with cascade at 60, Citra at 30 and 10 and Nelson Sauvin at flame out. Depending on the result I might have to dial back my hop addiction hah.

As for the cucumber I planned on chopping it up, freezing it, then letting it thaw before adding it to the secondary. I I have a vegetable dehydrator, I wonder if dehydration might give it more aroma. I'm not a big fan of adding veggies or fruit to the boil. You get some weird flavors from the skins and tannins and what not. I've been looking around the interwebs for help, but haven't had much luck yet. I've seen a cucumber kolsch on untapped but i forget what brewery it was. When I start this one I'm definatly going to put updates on here.

I think it would help to have an exact idea of your vision. I would bet that any late hop addition would mask most or all of the cucumber aroma. That said, you could focus on having cucumber flavor instead. And if it's citrusy flavor your after, why not just add citrus peel or kumquats or something with a more focused profile than hops?

I might just use magnum for 60 and maybe cascade for 30

I've done a cucumber beer (in a Belgian Pale Ale), and I can tell you what I learned:

I peeled and chopped 3 lbs of fresh cucumber for 5 gallons of beer then racked the finished beer on top of them, in secondary. After 72 hours I checked on the beer and holy crap it was awful. The cucumber did not impart the fresh summery crispness that you would think. It tasted like cooked/old/slightly spoiled cucumber in my beer. I bottled it and stuffed it in the back of the closet. That was about 6 months ago. It is now starting to taste decent. The cucumber is mellowing out.

I tasted a cucumber blonde from a local brewery back in August, and it wasn't a whole lot better. It's apparently a tough one to nail.

If I could make a suggestion: If it were me, doing it again, I would either 1) Proceed as planned, but check the beer every 18-24 hours for taste. Be ready to get it out. Or 2) Make a very large batch of cucumber water ahead of time, and brew with it (or at least boil a smaller amount of wort with your normal brewing water and top off with the cucumber water). I have no idea if that would work, but it's worth a shot.

Good luck!

I'm thinking of doing a cucumber pale ale. I was going to add a little borage at the end of the boil. I'm also going to chop up enough cucumber to fill a 750 ml mason jar and then pour cheap gin over it. Two ounces of juniper are going in the boil and two more are going in the secondary with the cucumber gin mix. I'm also using chinook hops for their piney taste. The goal is something that would taste somewhat like hendricks gin.

I did a Cucumber Saison 2 summers ago. It was fantastic. I've had some folks scratch their heads with it, and others request a rebrew. I ended up "Dry Cucumbering" for 15 days. No boiling or freezing of the cucumber.
My recipe was a very simple blonde, but with a little grains of paradise, because i was given some. Pepper would work just as well. I let that beer ferment out for a week, then cleaned and sanitized my knife, cutting board, peeler, spoon, and gloved up. I ended up with 3.5 pounds of meat (no seeds or skins) and put it right into the bucket (primary). I let it set a little long, so next time I'd stop at 10 days. Bottle or keg as usual.

I did have a few bottled that i cracked open months later. The cucumber was still there 6 months later, and was still very tasty.

Good luck.

So I asked a company Historic Brewing Company how they did theirs. It sounds like they put theirs in a bright tank or in kegs; however, I will brew a lager and let you know how it goes.