Thought I'd resurrect this thread to talk about my recently brewed bacon porter
I took 1gal of a robust porter I brewed and added 8oz of bacon. I cooked the bacon in the oven on parchment paper until the point of being almost burnt (which is how I like to eat it) then pressed it between paper towels until basically no more oil came out. This crushed up the bacon quite a bit. I put the bacon in a muslin bag and added it to the 1gal of porter for 4 days.
At bottling, the baconized porter was WAAAAAY too bacon-y so I blended it with a gallon of the regular porter. The bacon flavor at this point seemed kinda... gross... to me, almost like it was rancid, so I wasn't very excited about having wasted an extra gallon of good porter.
Now, about 5 weeks since bottling, the bacon flavor is better. I wouldn't call it delicious but it's definitely bacon and definitely and a pretty good beer. Maybe it needs to mellow like spices? Lol... I think a touch of smoked malt would have made the flavor feel more natural in a beer, if bacon beer can ever be called natural.
Anyways, the one thing I found amazing is that this beer has HUGE head and great head retention. Even if I pour gently I can't fit a 12oz bottle in a standard pint glass. The head is thick and there's a thin layer that lasts the whole glass. The regular porter has less head and less retention... it could be a difference in priming sugar amounts, but I thought oils from the bacon would kill the head. Definitely not true in this case.
Another weird thing, this beer seems to mess me up more than standard beer. No idea why.