Gran0amigo
Member
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2012
- Messages
- 17
- Reaction score
- 8
Hello Open Minded Folk,
This year for Thanksgiving I am planning to try something a little different, I want to brew the ultimate Thanksgiving beer (unsubstantiated statement but there for effect) and where better a place to start than with a big ol' turkey in the boil pot. The plan is to brew the beer and then serve the turkey at thanksgiving dinner.
When I started concocting the recipe for this beer I was having a lot of trouble deciding on the base beer to go with, the meaty/sulfury/salty flavors of the turkey combined with the herbaceous spices that will be used to season it didn't initially send me to any particular style. I decided to look at it from a different perspective and imagine the ultimate Thanksgiving "bite" and what flavors might be present. I am one of those people who likes to get a little bit of everything on the fork for each bite so I assembled a list of dishes/flavors that I would expect to have in this "ultimate bite" of Thanksgiving dinner and imagined what sip of beer would wash it down nicely.
The flavors that I wanted to incorporate are those that I most closely associate with Thanksgiving, Turkey, cranberry sauce, smoke, sweet potato, brown sugar, maple, and various spices. My imagination leads me to believe that all of these flavors will be complimented by the caramel, biscuit, nut and spicy flavors of a clean fermented American brown ale.
So I used my go to brown ale base with some modifications to account for adjunct sugar additions (totaling in 5% of final extract) and put together a list of procedures for developing every part of this beer.
I will be brewing this beer exactly one week from today for our family's Thanksgiving feast (turkey for the feast... beer to follow) and I invite anyone borderline insane enough to try this with me to do the same.
I will attach the beer XML and a PDF for those who don't have the software, I have included very detailed instructions for every portion of the recipe development (I didn't list many specifics on wort production procedures as our systems are all so different, just shoot for a near match of the recipe parameters and it should be fine)
If you plan to follow the recipe as specified keep in mind that if you don't have your own grain mill that you will need to smoke a pound of Maris Otter a few days in advance, dry it out and take it back to your local HB shop to be milled (make sure to ask if they will still be willing to crush it for you). If you would rather substitute with a smoked malt then experiment with what is available, peat smoked malt you may want to use less than a pound as it is a very intense smoke (I am going for a hint of smoke flavor not a rauchbier)
Im interested to hear people's thoughts on this keeping in mind that I already know Im an insane person for trying this and have considered the fact that this could turn out to be completely unpalatable.
One additional note, I will be using a stock pot that is separate from my normal brewing pot so that none of my hot side equipment is inadvertently trashed. If you do not have a separate boil pot consider borrowing a stock pot from a friend or producing the turkey free wort in your usual kettle and taking a portion of the wort to boil the turkey in a stove top pot then blending into the fermentor post boil.
let me know what you think,
Cheers
View attachment Thanksgiving Turkey Beer.pdf
View attachment Thanksgiving Turkey Beer.xml
This year for Thanksgiving I am planning to try something a little different, I want to brew the ultimate Thanksgiving beer (unsubstantiated statement but there for effect) and where better a place to start than with a big ol' turkey in the boil pot. The plan is to brew the beer and then serve the turkey at thanksgiving dinner.
When I started concocting the recipe for this beer I was having a lot of trouble deciding on the base beer to go with, the meaty/sulfury/salty flavors of the turkey combined with the herbaceous spices that will be used to season it didn't initially send me to any particular style. I decided to look at it from a different perspective and imagine the ultimate Thanksgiving "bite" and what flavors might be present. I am one of those people who likes to get a little bit of everything on the fork for each bite so I assembled a list of dishes/flavors that I would expect to have in this "ultimate bite" of Thanksgiving dinner and imagined what sip of beer would wash it down nicely.
The flavors that I wanted to incorporate are those that I most closely associate with Thanksgiving, Turkey, cranberry sauce, smoke, sweet potato, brown sugar, maple, and various spices. My imagination leads me to believe that all of these flavors will be complimented by the caramel, biscuit, nut and spicy flavors of a clean fermented American brown ale.
So I used my go to brown ale base with some modifications to account for adjunct sugar additions (totaling in 5% of final extract) and put together a list of procedures for developing every part of this beer.
I will be brewing this beer exactly one week from today for our family's Thanksgiving feast (turkey for the feast... beer to follow) and I invite anyone borderline insane enough to try this with me to do the same.
I will attach the beer XML and a PDF for those who don't have the software, I have included very detailed instructions for every portion of the recipe development (I didn't list many specifics on wort production procedures as our systems are all so different, just shoot for a near match of the recipe parameters and it should be fine)
If you plan to follow the recipe as specified keep in mind that if you don't have your own grain mill that you will need to smoke a pound of Maris Otter a few days in advance, dry it out and take it back to your local HB shop to be milled (make sure to ask if they will still be willing to crush it for you). If you would rather substitute with a smoked malt then experiment with what is available, peat smoked malt you may want to use less than a pound as it is a very intense smoke (I am going for a hint of smoke flavor not a rauchbier)
Im interested to hear people's thoughts on this keeping in mind that I already know Im an insane person for trying this and have considered the fact that this could turn out to be completely unpalatable.
One additional note, I will be using a stock pot that is separate from my normal brewing pot so that none of my hot side equipment is inadvertently trashed. If you do not have a separate boil pot consider borrowing a stock pot from a friend or producing the turkey free wort in your usual kettle and taking a portion of the wort to boil the turkey in a stove top pot then blending into the fermentor post boil.
let me know what you think,
Cheers
View attachment Thanksgiving Turkey Beer.pdf
View attachment Thanksgiving Turkey Beer.xml