Black Truffle Beer Project

Say what you want about truffles: delicious, overpriced, aroma of the heavens, a fad, fungal gold, yuppie, classic, nouveu riche... It is undeniable that they hold a exalted place in cuisine, and have a unique flavor and aroma of their own.

I am going to try to put them in beer.

It has been done before: The Bruery's Salt of the Earth was made with truffle salt, and this Frenchman apparently sells a truffle-infused brew at his B&B. I haven't had the pleasure of trying either.

The first part of this project will be research on two main questions:

1. How to infuse the beer with truffle flavor and aroma?
2. What style of beer will provide a good base for a balanced final result?

Some preliminary research leads me to believe that the answer to the first question will be similar to how nuts are introduced into beers. Oils, and sometimes even vodka are often used as vehicles for truffle flavor, indicating that their flavor/aroma compounds are probably fat-soluble, similar to peanuts/hazelnuts. Many threads exist on these boards regarding nut flavorings in beer, and two approaches seem to be most effective:

• Soak the nuts (truffles) in vodka, and add the infused vodka to secondary.
• Add nuts (truffles) late in primary or early in secondary, then use a long settling period and careful racking to separate oils.

Obviously, cost is always a consideration. There does exist synthetic "truffle aroma" which could also be used; this is often how truffle oils get their flavor.

The second question is where I'm the most clueless. Some sites advertising "Beer & Truffle Dinners" pair IPA's or Black IPA's with truffles, saying that the bitterness compliments the strong umami of truffle-rich dishes. However, nuts are often infused into porters or stouts. The French beer linked above is a blonde ale at its heart. The Bruery's Salt of the Earth was a goze, a wheat beer.

My plan will be to attempt a few one-gallon batches some time in the next few months, to test style and utilization methods. Eventually, this will be followed by a 5-gallon batch, potentially in time for the late-summer competition season.

Input is welcomed. Have you tried this before? Have you had a truffle-flavored beer, and what can you say about it? Do you have a bottle of Salt of the Earth you wouldn't mind trading? Do you happen to have a neighbor who owns a truffle-sniffing pig?

Spectators are welcome, too.

Hm. My impulse would be to try it in a british brown ale or brown porter, maybe something straddling the two styles. The maltiness probably would compliment the truffles, and there should maybe be a hint of roastiness. Just a hint, or it may cover the truffle flavor. Hopping should be low I imagine, for the same reason. Flavorful british yeast seems like it would be best - that malty richness, with a hint of butterscotch adding a savory touch - like in a fullers ESB or Sam Smith's Old Brewery Pale.

I think that Goze was a style of beer often served with salt, right? That would make sense, if it was made with truffle salt. They just swapped out the salt they used. I think truffles would work good with a 'salty' sort of beer. Again, some british beers have an almost salty quality, perhaps due to the hard water they use.

The maltier forms of Biere de Gard would also be worth trying, IMHO. And Munich Dunkel, if you have lagering capability.

A wee heavy, maybe?

I'd say go with a brune biere de garde, maybe with some brett pitched after primary has died down, and the truffle infused vodka added at bottling.

I'd skip the roasty/high alcohol/hoppy/brett angles. For these one gallon test batches you want to isolate the effects of the truffles only. I think the vodka infusion makes the most sense (pending a little research to make sure the flavors you want are alcohol-soluable) as you could grind up the truffles and give them extended contact time with the alcohol. A range of ales present themselves, but beers in the brown/amber range seem like the best candidates to me. Light toasty/nutty/biscuity/grainy flavors seem complimentary to the earthy notes of truffle (disclaimer: I've only had "truffle oil" which is not made with real truffles... I've never tried true truffles which are a different animal).

Resurrecting this thread, now that work is back under control... I have been able to get some further research done.

First, add another potential style to the list: Randy Mosher, in his book Radical Brewing, gives a recipe for a Truffle Trippel utilizing a full ounce of sliced truffles in secondary. He also has a recipe for a Chanterelle Ale that looks very intriguing, but I digress.

While he's being hypocritical for his namesake, I have to agree with bigbeergeek in that any overly-powerful base beer will squelch the truffle character. Following this reasoning, I looked more into the gose style used by The Bruery in their "Salt of the Earth". Gose is typically a very small wheat beer, with some lactobacillus-based sourness. This approach also the most cost-effective route, considering that truffle salt is far more affordable than ounces of whole truffles. I emailed The Bruery asking for recipe tips, and Mr. King was kind enough to point me in the direction of Stan Hieronymus' excellent book Brewing with Wheat for more information on gose. While Mr. Hieronymus did a very good job of discouraging me from seeking a specific recipe, the later chapters of his book contain a recipe by Kristen England for a traditional gose (which Mr. England has posted online). I will try to brew a test batch by the end of this week, or within the next three at the latest. Mike at The Mad Fermentationist has been very kind about answering questions regarding culturing Lacto from yogurt.

Here is the working recipe for the first test batch of Black Truffle Gose. It is loosely based on Mr. England's recipe, but tailored to ingredients that I have on hand.

ajfranke said:

While he's being hypocritical for his namesake, I have to agree with bigbeergeek in that any overly-powerful base beer will squelch the truffle character.

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I resent that remark

I suppose a "real" big beer geek would tell you to toss the black truffles into a bourbon-oaked soured Belgian imperial wet-hopped India Black Ale... I guess I'm a phony after all.

I think keeping the base beer a simple as possible is going to make the experiment as educational as possible. Sour + truffles is an odd combination to me, but I wish you good luck and successful brewing nonetheless.

I think using truffle salt is the way to go. That stuff is STRONG, you probably won't need all that much to get the flavor to stand out plus it's a cost effective way to get that flavor. Obviously truffle oil won't work (and it doesn't actually contain real truffle anyways) and buying actual truffles is just outrageously costly. The salt also ensures that you have high quality well-preserved truffle essence.

A gose is a great idea but I'd imagine you could do another style by starting with distilled water and building up your mineral profile.

I could see truffles working really well with brett.

Your recipe calls for 0.1oz liquid salt? I'm not totally sure what that means.

bigbeergeek said:

I suppose a "real" big beer geek would tell you to toss the black truffles into a bourbon-oaked soured Belgian imperial wet-hopped India Black Ale... I guess I'm a phony after all.

I think keeping the base beer a simple as possible is going to make the experiment as educational as possible. Sour + truffles is an odd combination to me, but I wish you good luck and successful brewing nonetheless.

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I'll have to try making a BTBOSBIWHIBA next, if this one works. :fro: But I completely agree on keeping it simple. I think a gose is a nice candidate because it's a small beer and therefore an inexpensive experiment, and the salt makes for an affordable vehicle for the truffles. Also, it worked well enough for The Bruery that they thought it to be somewhat commercially viable.

bovineblitz said:

Your recipe calls for 0.1oz liquid salt? I'm not totally sure what that means.

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Hopville has been doing weird stuff on me whenever I try to enter amounts in fractional teaspoons.

This recipe got brewed this afternoon. I didn't end up pitching lactobacillus into the recipe, due to neither of my cultures turning out well. I did add all the acidulated malt that I had on hand to try to get some semblance of sourness.

Most of the recipes that I found called for adding the salt at knockout. Unfortunately, I've been suffering from a recurring subtle infection in my past few batches, which I think comes from the fine-mesh sieve that I used to strain the wort. I went without straining this time, and just let the cooled wort settle, then poured it into the carboy. Unfortunately, this left most of the truffle pieces in the trub left in the kettle. The wort was crazily aromatic, reeking of truffles. If this batch turns out ok, the next time I might try adding the salt in secondary, or in early primary, just to allow the truffle pieces to come into more contact with the alcohol during fermentation.
It will be interesting to see how much of the truffle aroma survives primary fermentation.

ajfranke said:

It will be interesting to see how much of the truffle aroma survives primary fermentation.

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So, primary should be winding down. How does it smell?

rocketman768 said:

So, primary should be winding down. How does it smell?

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Unfortunately I was out of town for all of active fermentation. I lack any sort of temperature control, so I'm betting it was between 70 and 72F. From the scum on the side of the fermenter, the krausen never got higher than an inch or so. Unfortunately, a few wisps of white scum on the surface give indication that this batch has a bit of the same infection that my past 4 brews or so have had. I think it's being propagated by the turkey baster that I use to pull gravity samples, since that's the only common piece of equipment between all batches, other than the kettle.

I'm prepping to bottle this tonight, and just pulled a gravity sample. 1.013, right on the money.

Holy cow. :fro: This is unlike any other beer that I've ever had. It's so out of my knowledge range that I'm not even sure I'm allowed to say whether it came out "good" or not. Even through early-Spring allergies, the gravity sample smells like truffles in spades, with just a hint of esters. And can one smell "saltiness"? If so, there's a twinge of it. Then the taste is just zany. The truffles come through big time, but in a different way than the smell. Darker? Mellower? But certainly rich. The saltiness and the richness almost leave an oily mouthfeel. There's even a bit of playful fruitness from the yeast, or maybe the coriander. Call me a newb to the gose style, but the saltiness is borderline off-putting.

I'm going to carbonate to ~3.5 volumes, and bottle condition. Next update in 2-3 weeks...

What category do I even enter this under, for a competition? Spice and Herb beers?!

Hi everyone, I hope you don't mind me bumping this thread to find out if anyone can provide tasting notes (homebrew or commercial), I'm specifically interested in the different styles of truffle beers people have tried, type, quantity and infusion methods for truffles and the optimum time to age (ie drink fresh or age, if so for how long?). Thanks to everyone for the info so far - very interested in a wee project like this!

A friend of mine just did a collaboration with a chef in Boston to create a truffle beer. They chose to do a porter. I don't have any recipe info, but I can tell you it was a very expensive batch of beer.

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/restaurants/blog/2014/04/16/jason-bonds-super-rare-black-truffle-beer/

https://www.moodytongue.com/our-beers/

My brewery I work for, Moody Tongue, here in Chicago has successfully done a Black Truffle Pilsner. We are actually re-releasing it on tap tomorrow but we have bombers for sale. Was researching all other similar projects which is how I came by this. Our pilsner is super light and a great vessel to showcase any secondary ingredient you wish to excentuate. That is what I recommend trying honestly but good luck and let me know how it goes! Come on by and try it out!