Loving my new Hobby

[Teerum]

I live in the suburbs of Seattle and have been brewing for about 6 months. I did a few kits from my local homebrew store which turned out really good and then started using recipes and lately making my own recipes. My favorite is pumpkin beer and after a pretty bad batch last time, I made some changes and thimk I will have a very drinkable beer. The next type of beer I want to do is chile pepper. Being in the northwest I get to go to lots of brewfests and I have tasted some really good pepper beers and woul like to try my hand at one of those.

Edit: I do extract brewing

 

[antony]

a friend of mine puts a serano pepper in the bottle. last one i had was in a rye i think---good stuff just pretty spicy.

 

[jholen]

Welcome from Bellevue!

Have you looked into partial mashes? It can really open up some other grains/malts for you to use and incooperate into your beers, some that need to be mashed and can't simply be steeped as specialty grains. Pretty inexpensive to get into as well - just need a big strainer.

 

[Teerum]

Thanks for the ideas. I think a whole serrano in each bottle would be way too hot for my liking, but maybe 1/4 pepper or something. As far as the partail mash, I have done a couple of those for my pumpkin beers. Thanks for the welcome, this site has been helpful allready and I'm sure I will continue to find answers to future questions here es well.

 

[bernerbrau]

I would recommend soaking the peppers overnight in some vodka. It will mellow down the pepper, extracting some of the capsaicin, kill any wild yeast the pepper may be harboring, and being a neutral spirit it won't contribute much to the beer's flavor.