Craziest thing you have put in a mash or boil

I am a lazy brewing that doesnt bother much with throwing things in primary/secondary, so whatever I can get to carry over in a mash or a boil I love. With that, Im getting bored with average recipes, want something crazy to make, what its the weirdest thing you have put in a boil or mash?

 

This is going to turn out badly.

 

Half melted black licorice candy. It was terrible. All the bitterness with none of the sweetness. And it was stagnant water green.

 

Hahaha, I know right? Me and a brew buddy had a talk about what we could do next and wanted to see what other people have done

 

There was a guy on here talking about throwing an entire pumpkin pie into the boil.

 

Bog myrtle, dried elderberries, fresh ground multi colored peppercorns, and blood orange zest. Not really weird but also not commonly used ingredients.

 

Cilantro for a cilantro-lime Pale Ale. It was actually pretty good! I had to dry-cilantro it also to get more flavor and aroma.:rockin:

 

Pumpkin purée. While not too crazy, it was still bizarre to me seeing thick pumpkin goop in my mash.

 

Not something I have brewed, but a friend told me about this beer he got to try a year or two back.

"Right Brain Brewery: Mangalitsa Pig Porter
Vegetarians, beware: This porter does, indeed, count swine as an ingredient. The Michigan brewery includes four cold-smoked Mangalitsa pig heads—brains removed, mind you—and bags of bones in each batch of porter. The result is slightly smoky and curiously, compulsively drinkable."

 

I just did this and thought the same thing.
I had no idea what sort of mess it would be or what would happen in the bucket.

I don't know what the primary bucket is going to look like when the beer comes out.

 

2 lbs of grated ginger root in the boil.

 

2 pounds of fresh ginger!
What was the beer and how did it taste?
That's 0.8 oz per pint!

 

it was a pretty standard pale ale recipe with the ginger added.

it had a bite to it, but not as over powering as you'd expect, but definatly a ginger beer.

 

I've made a pumpkin beer and have a jalapeno beer going right now. I added some jalepnos to the boil and I think the flavor came out nicely but no heat so I'm going to "dry jalapeno" it soon.

 

I put 5lbs of pumpkin pie filling into the boil of my barleywine. 10 min boil left some serious burn on the bottom of my kettle. I was stirring, but just whirlpooled everything into the middle. (Lazy) took me 3 days of soaking and scrubbing to clean it. Barleywine turned out fantastic though.

My buddy put a pork liver into the boil of one of his themed beers. (He's an artist). The beer turned out pretty good actually.

 

I personally haven't done anything really crazy (pumpkin, but that's old hat around here). However, I have drank several beers with strange mash/boil additions, including:

Pies, both in the mash and as a "pie hop."
Doughnuts (mash)
Peanuts (mash) - apparently this is the best way to get the peanut flavor in the beer, and it was a damn good PB&J beer.
Shellfish (boil, I'm assuming) - kind of like an oyster stout, but using a variety of shellfish. Had this at EBF last year - forget the name of the brewery. Kinda weird...

And of course the HBT folks here have mashed/boiled all sorts of things. Anything with convertible starches or sugars can be fermented, and most of it has been...

 

Lavender I used too much. People either loved it or hated it.

 

I'm surprised no one has tried a bacon and molasses combo. Maybe that should be my next experiment.

 

This year I wasn't prepared and didn't have the carboy space but next year I'm planning on making a true thanksgiving beer. I plan on adding pumpkin, squash, yams, carrots, and corn to the mash. Then adding boiled turkey breast to the secondary. Needless to say its going to be interesting.

 

Pretzels (unsalted) in the mash for PretzAle Brown Ale. It came out amazing

 

Canned creamed corn

 

Don't think I haven't thought about bacon!!
I was thinking that bacon beer would be good just the other night while I was cooking some up.
The problem that I see is all the oil. You would have a grease ring in the keg and the oils would probably prevent any head on the beer.

 

I think he was referring to this beer here.... Voodoo Doughnut

 

That does it. I was going to go to Portland this weekend and eat at hooters, but now I'm going to have to look for that beer while I'm there!
I see they sell it for $13 for a 750ML bottle through the website but maybe I'll see if they have it on tap at the brewery / Pub.

Clog your arteries and pickle your liver at the same time??

I would bet they use enough bacon to say it has bacon in it and get the flavor mostly elsewhere, but how knows.

 

Bacon

a doughnut

30% of the 'grain bill' being peanuts

 

on those peanut beers did you leave them whole or crushed?

 

roughly crushed with a mortar and pestle

 

You have inspired one of my next brews!

 

Lucky charms cereal

 

I think the rule should be you have to comment on how each item turned out as a result.

 

WINNAR!

 

I tea bagged a brown ale.

Not the type of tea bag you are thinking but the thought crossed my mind

I added a couple tea bags to the mash. It turned out quite well.

 

Oh yeah, I also used coca tea and yerba mate in a test batch... unfortunately that was my only batch to get infected. I want to give it another shot but haven't gotten around to it... might just go with the coca next time since it's less jittery than the giant caffeine dose you get from yerba mate, plus the mate flavor is really strong.

I like the idea of rating them all.

Bacon (dry porked) - horrible at first, but mellowed to a nice level and turned out to be pretty good but a little salty. A novelty worth trying, but I won't do it again. It was awesome mixed with a maple syrup beer, tasted like breakfast.

Doughnut - my friend wanted to make a blueberry donut beer so i insisted we throw an actual donut into the mash. The donut didn't affect things much but the beer turned out quite good, surprisingly so considering it was something like 22% crystal and had a lot of lactose in it. He served it with cinnamon sugar on the rim for a novelty.

Peanuts (mash) - peanut butter and jelly beer, inspired by an offering Cigar City brought to the Extreme beer fest after a conversation with one of the brewers. Turned out AWESOME even with some sort of wild yeast infection from the mixed berries which made it slowly get more tart over time (a good thing if you ask me). The berries kind of dominated it but after eating something salty the peanuts were more noticeably present. It smelled just like a PB&J sandwich too.

 

Reeses Puffs cereal

 

Somehow I get the feeling the flavor wouldn't be too pronounced... how'd it turn out?

 

I wonder if one used a coagulant like fermcap-s if the bacon idea would work without too many oils making their way into the final glass thus affecting head retention? There has to be a way to get the actual bacon flavor from the meat without all of the oil. Perhaps extra crispy bacon, dried?

 

One more step!! From there you tincture it with grain alcohol and the oil will separate to the top where you skim it off

 

What about racking under the oil layer? Or how would you skim it off? Decant? Also, what temp and how long to tincture?

 

Not sure if this counts..... Brewed last weekend, those damn f&#king Boxelder Bugs kept dive bombing into my boiling wort. They died instantly. I'm 99.9% sure I got them all out.....hopefully.

 

Either way, you should name the beer "Box Elder Bitter" or whatever style it is...