Chilies in mash?

[drunkEnough4U]

Hey everybody I was recently looking up brewing with chilies and couldn't find anything on mashing with them. I'm wondeing if this has been tried by any of you crazy cats or if it's supremely useless?

 

[bleme]

I wouldn't say it is useless, but capsaicin dissolves in oil or alcohol, but not water so I would say that it work better as a "dry hop".

 

[NorthwestBrewman2013]

+1 on dry hop. And, honestly, using dried chilies might be better than putting in fresh. Just give them a rough chop, soak in a bit of vodka a couple days prior, and toss 'em in.

 

[mglicini]

I have not tried this before, but I had a friend who worked for a brewery and they made a raspberry jalapeno beer that had some flavor and heat present from the jalapeno. He told me they used pickled jalapenos at flame off for 10 minutes.. I don't know if they rinsed them first to get rid of the vinegar or not, but I'm assuming the yeast could clean up most of the vinegar flavors during primary.

 

[bleme]

Vinegar is one of the flavors that yeast will NOT clean up. Only use pickled peppers if you want vinegar flavor.

 

[mglicini]

Vinegar is one of the flavors that yeast will NOT clean up. Only use pickled peppers if you want vinegar flavor.

I believe you, I just was unable to find a source that explicitly says it.. which is why I said assuming.. I guess the saying about assuming is true wasn't trying to give bad information.

bleme do you happen to know your source/have you tried this?
I don't know why the brew assistant would tell me that if it wasn't true. I didn't taste any vinegar but it was like 6 years ago, and my palet for beer has definitely change dramatically

Maybe sliced at flame off would work and NOT using pickled, if you wanted to use fresh peppers

 

[bleme]

Every homebrewer dreads getting an Acetobacter infection (the bacteria that makes vinegar). I've gotten it once. Fortunately it was a 1-gallon experiment, so I only ended up with 1 gallon of malt vinegar. I had saccharomyces and brettanomyces yeasts in there also, but there was no competition on who won that fight.

Fresh, roasted, or dried chilis will each impart a slightly different flavor. Personally, I'm not a fan of chilis in a light beer but I've had a couple dark beers that were good and the roasted chilis played well.

Sliced at flameout would work fine, especially if you are concerned about infection. I'm sure that is the way most commercial breweries handle it. Roasting them or dunking in StarSan takes care of infection as well.

BTW, worst beer ever was a cheap mexican lager with a whole jalapeno in the bottle. I have no idea how they got it in there, as it was too big to come out.

 

[mglicini]

Every homebrewer dreads getting an Acetobacter infection (the bacteria that makes vinegar). I've gotten it once. Fortunately it was a 1-gallon experiment, so I only ended up with 1 gallon of malt vinegar. I had saccharomyces and brettanomyces yeasts in there also, but there was no competition on who won that fight.

Fresh, roasted, or dried chilis will each impart a slightly different flavor. Personally, I'm not a fan of chilis in a light beer but I've had a couple dark beers that were good and the roasted chilis played well.

Sliced at flameout would work fine, especially if you are concerned about infection. I'm sure that is the way most commercial breweries handle it. Roasting them or dunking in StarSan takes care of infection as well.

BTW, worst beer ever was a cheap mexican lager with a whole jalapeno in the bottle. I have no idea how they got it in there, as it was too big to come out.

I knew it was caused by that bacteria, but thanks for the information.. glad I never made the clone I was planning on attempting at one time

 

[bigbadgreen]

I have used chilies before. I made a smoked pepper wheat. I "dry peppered" with a mix of chipotle and ancho. I soaked them in vodka for 5 minutes and tossed them into the secondary. After 10 days (with lots of samples) i determined it was smokey and spicey enough to bottle.
I don't think i would add them to the boil or mash based on my experience. I decided to dry pepper because i know that some veggies can get pretty bitter or impart other undesirable flavors if over processed.

 

[Desert_Sky]

I would brew a lighter beer then add chilies at bottling. Keep it simple

 

[ong]

I knew it was caused by that bacteria, but thanks for the information.. glad I never made the clone I was planning on attempting at one time

Of course, if you used canned pickled peppers, there would be no live acetobacter microbes left to inoculate the beer. (Like how distilled vinegar is effectively sterile.)

 

[triethylborane]

When I make mexican cake porter, I blend (food processor) two habaneros with my other additions and add to secondary. Only needs a few days in secondary. I think a lot of flavor would be lost if it was added to the mash.

 

[Juno_Malone]

I've used chiles several ways before, but never in the mash.

I brewed a Jamaican Jerk Red Ale where I toasted a couple Scotch Bonnets (along with some other spices) in a dry pan and then soaked in rum for 48 hours or so. This was an interesting beer, but I liked this method of adding both the flavor and heat of the peppers.

I brewed a Smoked Chipotle Stout where I added 3.5g of dried Chipotle peppers at flameout, and then added one more dry pepper directly to the carboy 48 hours prior to bottling. I don't think I did anything to sanitize that one pepper, but it turned out fine. This ended up tasting really good.

There's a popular Jalapeno Cream Ale recipe on the forums here that I've made a few times. It has you roast 4 fresh Jalapenos (halved and seeded) at 350F or so for 30-40 minutes, followed by a soak in vodka. These are added around the end of the boil. You do this again with 4 more Jalapenos, to add to the carboy a week or so prior to bottling. With this method, you end up with all the flavor of the peppers but with very little heat. All of the heat ends up in the vodka, so I generally add a tablespoon or two of the soaking vodka to the beer to add a little heat back in. The rest of the vodka is used for making ridiculously good spicy bloody marys.

 

[Hellpop664]

I brewed an IPA using fresh jalapenos. Came out well, but the one mistake I made was putting the ground jalapenos directly in my trub. Next time I'll use a hop bag for the jalapeno mash. It kept clogging my siphon tube and my bottler. I lost about a 6 pack having to stop and clean my lines out.