Kaffir lime hefe

[Sharkman20]

I've made two batches of beer so far that are both still fermenting, and I was thinking of doing a third soon. I was reading the thread about the blood orange hefe and it gave me an idea. I have a kaffir lime tree I use for thai cooking and I was thinking of using some of the leaves to brew up a kaffir lime hefe. I could go along the same lines of just boiling the leaves and letting them steep and then adding these to primary to ferment. The leaves have a very strong flavor and aroma though, so I know I wouldn't need too many but I was wondering if anyone else has done this. If so, how many did you use and how did it turn out?

 

[frazier]

First of all, I'm envious of your tree. We love Thai cooking.

If you make a tea out of the leaves, what kind of flavor do you get? Mix some tea with some seltzer water to get a feel for the way the aroma gets carried. Then make a wild-ass guess.

Sorry, never tried it myself. Good luck, it sounds like fun!

 

[Wyrmwood]

Heh. When I saw this I was thinking kefir

 

[adfirmus]

Heh. When I saw this I was thinking kefir

Heh, brew a Keffir Lime Hefe with Kefir cultures in secondary. I guess you'd need some lactose though.

 

[Sharkman20]

First of all, I'm envious of your tree. We love Thai cooking.

If you make a tea out of the leaves, what kind of flavor do you get? Mix some tea with some seltzer water to get a feel for the way the aroma gets carried. Then make a wild-ass guess.

Sorry, never tried it myself. Good luck, it sounds like fun!

Check out your local home depot, I just happened to come across a few there. Never thought they would have carried them. I tried steeping a few leaves and I didn't get a whole lot of flavor out of them, but it added a lot of aroma and added slight bitterness which gave me the idea of throwing some in the last 20-30 minutes of the boil. Maybe something to combine with the flavor of the blood orange recipe. Might be something worth trying.

 

[supermoth]

Maybe you could dry "hop" with them?
Anyway, I just had to comment because I also have a little kaffir lime tree, and I'm brewing a hefe at this very moment!

 

[Sharkman20]

Maybe you could dry "hop" with them?
Anyway, I just had to comment because I also have a little kaffir lime tree, and I'm brewing a hefe at this very moment!

I thought of that too, but the leaves are pretty waxy and I think they wouldn't impart much to the beer at that point. Even after 15 minutes of boiling they were still semi floating on top of the water.

 

[adfirmus]

Everytime that I've used Kaffir lime leaves for cooking curry, I always slice them into small strips. Maybe slicing them into strips (parallel to central stem) and then tossing them at flame out, dry hop, or whenever might release more of the flavor. Also, you could dry toast them in a pan before dry hopping them. Yeah, that sounds good