SA-WEEEET Potato

[FatherJack]

I have once again come to the forum seeking the advice of the wise and mighty (and that's the truth!)

I'm thinking of what to brew next and I have about a million and one ideas in my head.

I know many brewers here do all grain, but I'm not quite ready for that yet, equipment and experience wise.

I do have a wide range of liquid malt extracts available to me in all sorts of colors though. I was thinking I wanted to try something different:

We are going into sweet potato season here in Japan and these buggers are darn sweet and have a nice complex flavor profile. I was thinking of making a brew with them.

What liquid malt extract would I use with this (a light? a dark? a medium?)

How would you folks pull this one off? Any/all advice is certainly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

 

[jmo88]

I would bake them and mash them up before adding them directly to the kettle. Try adding them 10-15 minutes before flameout, and pour everything, including the yam gunk, into the fermenter. 2-3 good sized yams should do the trick. I'd use light extract and try to get some color by steeping some crystal 60. Also, using a malt-focussed yeast like WLP002 should help make the yams noticeable after fermentation.

 

[COLObrewer]

I would bake them and mash them up before adding them directly to the kettle. Try adding them 10-15 minutes before flameout, and pour everything, including the yam gunk, into the fermenter. 2-3 good sized yams should do the trick. I'd use light extract and try to get some color by steeping some crystal 60. Also, using a malt-focussed yeast like WLP002 should help make the yams noticeable after fermentation.

+1 to all of this, maybe add some thanksgiving spices, and/or . . . . . roasted marshmallows?

 

[FatherJack]

Would the potato match with a strong amber ale style beer?

Or is it best to keep it on the lighter side to let the potato shine through?

Edit: The reason for this is I would like something that has a little more punch to it since it will be one of my winter beers.

 

[cklages]

I would probably contemplate doing one the pumpkin ale recipes and just sub sweet potato for the pumpkin. In fact I think that has been done. Of course for most of those recipes you need to enjoy the 'holiday spice', and I don't know if that is what you are going for. Good luck, I love the experimentation aspect to this hobby. If you come up with something great, don't forget to post the recipe!

 

[wonderbread23]

FYI, you're probably best off doing a mini-mash with some 2-row and the sweet potato. I'm guessing a lot of the sweet tater's fermentables are tied up as starches and need some hot 2-row enzymatic action to get a good yield. I'd roast the sweet taters first as well to caramelize them a bit.

 

[jmo88]

I'm guessing a lot of the sweet tater's fermentables are tied up as starches and need some hot 2-row enzymatic action to get a good yield.

Yes and No. Some starches can be converted to sugar by the 2-row, but there isn't enough of a contribution to the gravity to worry about it. Many AG recipes that could mash with pumpkin call for it in the kettle or the fermenter, so the unconverted starches are not a problem. Maybe if you used raw yams, it'd be a problem. But when you cook yams, they are very sweet, so there is no NEED to mash them.

 

[FatherJack]

Yes and No. Some starches can be converted to sugar by the 2-row, but there isn't enough of a contribution to the gravity to worry about it. Many AG recipes that could mash with pumpkin call for it in the kettle or the fermenter, so the unconverted starches are not a problem. Maybe if you used raw yams, it'd be a problem. But when you cook yams, they are very sweet, so there is no NEED to mash them.

So really, the taters don't factor too much into my final gravity reading?

If this is the case, I would still need the normal amount of fermentable sugars (for example, one can of liquid malt extract and a little over a kilo of DME?)

 

[aksea102]

BYO had a great Sweet Potato ESB recipe some months back. Maybe seach BYO online and see if it's available. If you are interested in the recipe and it's not available online, I will be glad to send it to you!

 

[devilishprune]

I made a sweet potato beer about... 6 weeks ago that I just kegged yesterday. The gravity contribution for the sweet potatoes after a 1 hour mash was about 8 ppg. Not totally insignificant, but you can't ignore that either. I had originally planned out 1.5 lbs of sugar in my recipe and had to cut it down to 1 to account for their contribution.

I roasted mine in the oven at 425 for 50 minutes until they got nice and caramelized, then I mashed them with a fork and threw them into the mash.

 

[jmo88]

So really, the taters don't factor too much into my final gravity reading?

If this is the case, I would still need the normal amount of fermentable sugars (for example, one can of liquid malt extract and a little over a kilo of DME?)

Pretty much. While they will add a little bit of fermentables, it's not that much to drastically alter the base recipe. Also, others mention a gravity increase after mashing them, but the yams already contain fermentable sugars after being baked and prior to putting them in the mash. So the starch conversion isn't accounting for all of the yam fermentables, just a very small portion.

 

[shipfaced]

Geppu PM sent ... sweet potato?

 

[nebben]

FYI, you're probably best off doing a mini-mash with some 2-row and the sweet potato. I'm guessing a lot of the sweet tater's fermentables are tied up as starches and need some hot 2-row enzymatic action to get a good yield. I'd roast the sweet taters first as well to caramelize them a bit.

I did this a few months ago. I shredded the raw sweet potatoes and did a mini-mash (not "mashed potatoes", but instead "beer mash") with 2row. I tried mashing at about 150-155F or so for about 90 minutes, then tried to sparge as best as I could. I don't recall what my gravity reading post-sparge was, but it was lower than I had anticipated. I ended up adding some extract to bring it up so my finished product would be between 4.5% and 5.5% ABV.

After the boil, I ended up with more trub than with any other beer I've ever made. I fermented with Safale 04.

Impressions of the beer from a few friends included mostly just "it's a great basic beer with plenty of cascade flavor and aroma." Unfortunately, the only thing sweet-potato'esqe that was observed was that the beer was more of an orange'ish/red'ish color, presumably from the tubers. Any flavor of sweet potato wasn't perceivable by myself or my friends.

Still a fun brew, especially at this time of year I would suspect. If I were to try it again, I think I would try shredding them, boiling as if to make mashed potatoes, then at the point that they are very soft and there is a lot of cloudiness in the pot, I would pour all of this into my mashtun and go ahead and try to beer-mash with a little more 2-row (maybe 60% or so). I don't recall the article I used, but I had a couple recipes that I used for guidance- one potato recipe and one sweet potato recipe.

Good luck!

 

[FatherJack]

So here's what I'm thinking:

I don't have the equipment yet to do an all grain brew (and I want to tinker with something easy for a while).

I was planning on buying this:

http://www.sakeland.net/?pid=6922180

I know, I know, it's in Japanese. But it's a Black Rock Pilsner Blonde kit. It comes with s-04 yeast, hops, Irish moss and priming sugar.

I was going to bake 3 large taters until they really caramelize and get gooey and syrupy (probably about 1 hour) and mash them. I was going to add about 20 grams each of freshly ground nutmeg and clove in a nylon tea bag (tea bags here are made out of nylon and have no flavor at all) and boil them in about 5 liters of water for 20 minutes with the taters. After this, I was going to remove the spices and toss in my liquid malt extract and mix it well and add it taters and all to my bucket, fill it up with water and pitch my yeast. I don't think I will add the extra hops to it.

This sound viable?

 

[jmo88]

Whoa! 20 grams of nutmeg and 20 grams of clove is WAY too much. The last squash ale I made used 1.5 teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice blend at 5 minutes left to the end of the boil. It is very noticeable but quite balanced for a "pumpkin" ale. I can't stress enough how you need to go easy on spices in beer. Try .75 tsp of clove and .75 tsp of nutmeg at 5 minutes left to the end of boil and then taste it before bottling. Then see if you need to add more from a spice tea prior to bottling. Remember though that carbonation will enhance the aroma and bring out the spices after bottling, so it may seem less spicy prior to bottling than it actually will be.

It would really suck to over spice a beer, because it would take many many months for it to be drinkable, if at all.

 

[FatherJack]

Thanks for the warning flag jmo.

I'll go with the amount and time you gave me. Is that the amount AFTER grinding?

Do all other aspects of the brew look like it's ok?

 

[pjj2ba]

Since this is going to be an extract beer, I'd be tempted to add the cooked (ie sanitized) sweet potatoes directly to the fermenter. I'd think of them just like hops. A long boil is going to drive off the aromatics and leave the more stable flavors. Later additions will give you more aromas. Since these would be already cooked, you don't really need to cook (boil) them again. All you need to do is to dissolve the flavor and aroma compounds in the wort. I think this would happen just fine in the fermentor. When the beer is finished you can just siphon off of the yeast and sweet potato gunk.

 

[jbrookeiv]

Check out the Bruery's Autumn Maple. They make theirs with tons of yams and maple syrup, it's a Belgian-style Brown Ale, and is my favorite autumn/pumpkin beer I've ever had.