Holiday Beer Question

[Nike_Eayrs]

Yes I know it's only July, but I've been kicking around an idea to make a Pecan Pie Porter for the holidays this year. I'll admit I don't have a firm recipe in mind, I just have a question on a process so here it goes. If I broke up a whole pecan pie and tossed it in the secondary, would any of the flavor come through in the final product? I know the yeast would eat a lot of the fermentable sugars. However, my hope is that since so many of the sugars are caramelized some of flavor would shine through with the crust and nut aroma. Anybody have an opinion on this or any experience? Cheers!

 

[RonPopeil]

caramelized sugars will still ferment. Candy sugars for brewing are made with DAP which bonds to sugar in such a way that makes it unfermentable/less fermentable.

The other ingredients in the pie may not be good in beer. Any oils or dairy would be no no's.

To emulate something like this I would start with a brown ale (already nutty) and add to it specialty grains and/or some sugars found in pecan pie. Brown sugar will leave a flavor in beer due to the molasses used in making it but not everyone likes that flavor in beer. I would not add pecans and instead opt for Marris Otter as a base, increase the amount of brown malt and add a good portion of Victory malt. This would be a good candidate for some Munich. If you were to use a crystal malt I would think something darker like a c80 would be good if kept small. I would shoot for high 1.050's, bitter with magnum to 25-30 IBU and not worry about late addition hops at all. Ferment with a clean yeast at a cooler temp to keep it neutral. A decoction mash would be good to emphasize the malt even more.

 

[johngaltsmotor]

I'd be afraid that the oils in the pecans might have a negative effect (especially head retention), but people make peanut butter porters so it isn't impossible to overcome. And the other things in there (shortening in the crust, etc) could be even bigger problems - especially going into secondary not being sanitized.

I'd be inclined to mash a bit higher for residual sweetness and mouthfeel and use a fair amount of Crystal malts. I've made a Caramel Christmas with a variety of Crystals (20, 40, 60, 80, 120L) to get 17SRM and only 25IBUs so the trick will be how to get the pecan flavor into it, then add a bit of the spices to make it easily recognizable as pecan pie.

 

[RonPopeil]

I've been knocking around the fall beer ideas as well and a brown of some sort is on the list. Here's what I came up with.

7.0# Marris Otter
1.25# Munich 10
1.25# Brown Malt
1.0# Victory
0.75# Crystal 120
0.5# Dark Brown Sugar

0.67oz Magnum @ 60 (13%AA)

OG: 1.059
FG: 1.014
IBU: 26
ABV: 6

 

[Nike_Eayrs]

I've been knocking around the fall beer ideas as well and a brown of some sort is on the list. Here's what I came up with.

7.0# Marris Otter
1.25# Munich 10
1.25# Brown Malt
1.0# Victory
0.75# Crystal 120
0.5# Dark Brown Sugar

0.67oz Magnum @ 60 (13%AA)

OG: 1.059
FG: 1.014
IBU: 26
ABV: 6

I like that recipe a lot! I'll tweak it a bit to make it more like Pecan pie. This whole idea started on vacation earlier this month. I was at a brewpub and they make a Christmas porter that had 15 pecan pies in the mash! Friends said that beer was amazing!! I tried to mash pumpkin in a beer last year and that was a complete disaster.......I was trying to think of another way.

 

[RonPopeil]

Well what it comes down to is: you can do whatever you want to your beer. Not many people will be able to tell you whether it'll be good or not because it's all subjective. If someone else has pulled it off I would ask them for tips in case they learned something along the way.