S'More Beer?

Anyone ever try brewing a smore beer?
I'm thinking toasted marshmallow flavor, graham cracker, and chocolate shouldn't be that hard to replicate in a (sweet stout?) beer.

Anyone want to chime in on what to use for the marshmallow and graham cracker ingredients? Chocolate is easy, and they do have marshmallow extract, but I don't know how good that would be or when to add it (secondary?)

Anyhow, please gimme some ideas for this one.
-Kelly

You may be able to add graham crackers (or the ingredients to make them) to your mash, especially if made them yourself and knew there was nothing bad for your beer in them.

According to a quick google search for graham cracker recipie, you should just be able to add the flavor components (cinnamon, honey, molasses, vanilla) in the right ratio to get "graham cracker taste". Marshmallow taste is pretty much vanilla anyway, so just add a bit extra from the "graham cracker" part.

I'd probably use some lactose and vanilla to cover the marshmallow flavor. Then something with a bready/biscuity flavor to get the graham cracker and maybe a bit of cinnamon. Maybe 5% biscuit or victory or even using maris otter as the base malt

Thanks for the suggestions.

This is what I came up with, more comments/suggestions welcome:

Partial Mash (or extract w/specialty grains, depending on how I feel that day) -

Pre-boil:
1.5 lbs flaked oats (for body/maybe flavor)
1 lb biscuit malt (graham flavor?)
1 lb special roast (campfire flavor)
1 lb chocolate malt (chocolate flavor)

60 minute Boil:
3 lbs 3 oz Dark LME
1 lb lactose
8 oz Molasses
8 oz Brown Sugar (Dark)

1 oz Williamette @ 15 mins
12 oz cocoa powder @ 15 mins (chocolate flavor)
.1 oz cinnamon stick @ 5 mins

1 lb Honey
1 tsp (?) vanilla extract
1 pkg Safale US-05 Yeast

I figure primary for 3-4 weeks, maybe a 1 week secondary depending on how much cocoa powder is floating around, then bottle for 3-4 more.

If you really want the "campfire" taste, special roast isn't going to do it for you, maybe put in 8oz of smoked malt instead, or even 4oz if you don't want the taste too present and more in the background.

Also, IIRC biscuit and flaked oats really need to be in a minimash with some 2-row and as such can't be steeped, you won't get much from them.

*bump*

Sooooo ksocia, I noticed that your signature says you have made the aforementioned beer. So how's that going? What was the final recipe?

It's still bottle conditioning, so I haven't tried it (plus I'm out of town currently), but here's what I ended up with:

Partial mash:
1 lb biscuit malt
1 lb chocolate malt
12 oz flaked oats
8 oz crystal 80
8 oz pale 2 row malt
8 oz special roast
4 oz smoked malt
(looking back, I should have used more pale 2 row)

Then add:
3 lbs 2.5 oz Dark LME (boil 60 mins)
1 lb milk sugar/lactose (boil 60 mins)
5.5 oz Dark Brown Sugar (boil 60 mins)
10 oz Molasses (boil 60 mins)
1 oz williamette hops (boil 15 mins)
1 Whirlfloc tablet (boil 15 mins)
12 oz cocoa powder (boil 15 mins)
1 lb honey (boil 5 mins)
.2 oz cinnamon sticks (2 sticks) – (boil 5 mins)

Cool, then pitch:
1 package dry Safeale US-05

21 day primary @ 68 degrees

Add 2.5 tsp vanilla extract to empty secondary container and siphon beer on top
Secondary for 1 week

Bottle using ~4 oz of corn sugar

At bottling time, it didn't taste very 'smore' like, but I could definitely taste the chocolate and vanilla flavor. Hopefully carbonation, chilling, and extra time will help everything meld together. I'll know in another couple weeks.

As an FYI, I'm glad I used a secondary/clearing vessel, as the cocoa powder had created a sludge at the bottom of the primary. In doing so, I lost about 1/3 of a gallon or so of wort that was soaked into the cocoa powder and misc sludge, but it was totally worth it to get rid of the nasty stuff.

Sounds awesome! Let us know how it taste when you crack one.

this is a real fun idea

Next time use Meadowfoam Honey. Tastes like marshmallow/vanilla.

I say get the Graham Cracker taste ans chocolate working then plop a mashmellow in it ........Kinda like you plop a citrus fuit in a wit beer to accentuate the citrus.

All a mashmellow is made of is egg whites and sugar.

I have got to try this........ I am going to try to do a 3 gallon batch for my small corny keg, I will definitely let the people here know how it comes out.

Thanks for the idea

Just tried one of the s'more beers. Keep in mind it's only been bottled for about 10 days, and I have no idea what I'm talking about when it comes to tastes/texture/etc.

Head: Decent light tan colored foam, decent carbination considering it's only been a week and a half, but head doesn't retain very long. Only put in the bottle in the fridge about 6 hours prior to tasting, so another day or two in the fridge (after another 2 weeks in the bottle) might fix some of these issues.

Color: Very dark brown, opaque except around the edges, relatively clear from what I can tell (no floating bits)

Smell: Very sweet, chocolate smell, with a hint of a sweet/honey/biscuit smell. Could maybe pass for graham cracker... maybe. Little bit of a smokey smell in the background

Taste: Sweet, smokey chocolate up front, the biscuit taste comes through with a sweet vanilla (I assume) aftertaste. Not really a marshmellow taste, but could maybe be a graham cracker and melted/campfire cooked chocolate combination.

Texture: Interesting... chewy and complex on the tongue, but not very heavy. Is it possible to have a somewhat light-but-chewy beer?

Overall: Would definitely make again, but might tinker with the honey and marshmallow/vanilla flavors so they are more pronounced, and cut back a little on the biscuit. I'd give it a 35/50 if I had to assign an overall number (or a 50/50 if I was a judge in the HBT contest )

I'll post again in a few weeks when it's had enough time to bottle condition appropriately. BTW: came out to ~5.5% ABV

Poobah58 said:

Next time use Meadowfoam Honey. Tastes like marshmallow/vanilla.

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+1

Somewhere in the Burnt Mead thread, the associated video, or the Charlie Papazian article (couldn't find it on short notice), someone mentioned that their burnt mead gave off a marshmallow flavor, so how about adding some burnt honey to the next batch?

I would advise against a beer like this. I just tried a Creme Brule stout last weekend at Smokin' Joes on the South Side of Pittsburgh. It was high ABV but the sweetness was God awful and overpowering. Like sucking down a bottle of isopropyl 90% with concentrated candle scent. Cripes... I think I am going to throw up just reliving that experience.

I love my sweet beers, so this one is just right for me. Brooklyn chocolate stout is top 3 for me, easily, if that tells you anything. But yes, this was very, very sweet and not for hopheads.

Beer's been bottled for a few weeks now, and it tastes great. It's super chocolately and sweet, and not hoppy at all, which is how I like it. Can taste some of the honey and graham in the background, but it isn't very strong. Definitely would need tweaking to your own tastes, and it isn't quite the s'more flavor I was expecting, but it's still good.

How about just a little bit of burnt sugar to give that cooked sugar taste of a roasted marshmallow?

Good idea, I'll have to play around with it next time

Have you tried making the recipe again with changes yet?

Julohan said:

Have you tried making the recipe again with changes yet?

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+1

I'd love to know ^_^

Julohan said:

Have you tried making the recipe again with changes yet?

Click to expand...

Not yet, though my beer brewing has slowed to a trickle recently. This is on my way back burner, as there's a bunch of other things I want to brew and/or tweak beforehand.

This was good, just not what I was expecting.

So here I am trolling through the new post pages, and come upon this thread. What a coincidence!
Last night my wife and I plus another couple went to Winterfest in St. Paul Minnesota. It is a brew sampling event with most every brewery in Minnesota. Each year one beer is chosen to receive the snow shoe award, the best in show so to speak.

Guess what the beer was........
A smore flavored porter. It was fantastic. It tasted like I was drinking an honest smore. It was called Grand Design.
The brewery is Flat Earth Brewery from St Paul. The beer was their normal Cygnus X-1 porter, with infused flavors to make it taste like a smore. I talked with the brewer, but did not push him to find out what was in it.
Very interesting coincidence.

Weird! I'll have to snoop around Flat Earth Brewery's website (assuming they have one).

They have a website, but I did not see it mentioned. Type it into the goog, and you should find some info.

i think this recipe deserves a reincarnation bump. i'm gonna do my own twist on this recipe cheating with the special flavoring stolen from capella.


capella is awesome for these dessert beers. yumyumyum

Make sure you update this thread to give us the results.

Julohan said:

Make sure you update this thread to give us the results.

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i'm curious as to what the OP, ksosh, has to say about the rest of the batch after it aged a while. many of these dessert beer ingredients aren't apparent at first but come on strong after a few weeks to months after bottling.

i'll def keep ya'll updated. i've gotta few other beers to try b4 i delve into this one.

I've got to give this a bump, since I've been wanting to do a S'more beer for a little while myself. I was hoping to brew it first, then share my results, but I think i can still contribute something of significance; a few people have mentioned using some burnt honey or sugar, which is along the lines of what first inspired me to do a S'more beer.

A while back I was toying with the idea of caramelizing my priming sugar to give some extra caramel flavour to my Irish Red. So I caramelized my dextrose and realized two things. First, even though I was using a candy/deep-fry thermometer, I over-caramelized the sugar a little bit by leaving it on the heat too long. It wasn't black, but a little over-toasted. Second, I realized that the 'caramel' we generally get in candy is probably sucrose, not dextrose. (And maybe third, caramelizing your priming sugar is probably unnecessary and possibly detrimental to priming?).

However, I did notice that the end result smelled just like roasted marshmallows. Which makes sense, because marshmallows (and just about every other candy) are made from corn sugar, and when you toast the 'mallows, you're basically caramelizing them (unless you like to full-on flambé). Therefor, using caramelized corn-sugar in a beer should give you a nice toasted marshmallow flavour (light bulb!).

The grain bill I'm putting together isn't too far off the ones posted already. I brew all-grain, so I'm thinking of something along these lines (for a 6 gallon batch):

9.0 lb ESB malt
1.0 lb wheat malt

1.0 lb biscuit malt
0.75 lb honey malt
0.4 lb chocolate malt
0.1 lb smoked malt

1.0 lb barley flakes
1.0 lb wheat flakes

1.0 lb caramelized dextrose
4.0 oz. cocoa
(both near end of boil)

and maybe 1 or 2 oz of cocoa in the secondary

I figure the wheat, biscuit and honey is a good start to try and get the graham cracker taste, and I went a little easy on the chocolate (compared to what's been posted) because I really want the marshmallow to come through. The reason for so little smoked malt is that the caramelized sugar should give some toasty flavour and I use that much roasted barley in my IRA, so I figured it would be a good starting point for smoked malt as well, rather than use too much and turn it into a sweet rauchbier.

Haven't thought about hops or yeast yet, but I'll probably just go with a basic bittering hop and a good british-style strain from Wyeast. Also, I'm not sure when I'll be brewing this; I just did a California Common, and next up is probably an IPA, hopefully the first week of October. But since I posted it on here I feel obligated (in a good way) to brew it before too long. I'm thinking mid-October, so late November there may be a new thread.

And yes, I always want S'more beer.

just thinking about this a bit, i know it would be more work, but what about doing this as a 2 part beer. somthing Ala Black and tan, keep the FG higher on one, so that it will stay more as a base. I'm a bit new to brewing, but think it may be an interesting shot