Serrano Pepper & Honey Robust Porter Experiment w/ Notes

[mrphillips]

Everyone seems to add peppers and honey at different times and in different ways, so for right or for wrong, I thought I'd share my experiences and processes.

The Peppers
I added 1 oz of dried serrano peppers to 1 cup vodka and lightly blended. Leave this sit for 1 week, then strain out the solid pepper parts. I add all of this liquid to the kettle at flameout.
The result? A wonderful, mouth-wrapping heat with some slight earthiness. No pepper smell in finished beer. Perfect heat, but not a lot of pepper flavor. It allows the flavors of the porter to shine through and not get overshadowed.

The Honey
I added 1 pound of DARK wildflower honey to the secondary. It added .006 gravity points and fermented completely out. The honey really came through on the nose, and hits the tongue quickly before fading.

This was for a 5 gal. batch. The beer started at 1.056 (1.062 after factoring in the honey) and finished lower than I expected @ 1.012 (again, the honey completely fermented out, so there was no change in FG) ~ 6.6%. This is a very new beer, so I don't know how the honey and peppers will age...I don't think it's going to last very long

 

[sibelman]

Thanks for sharing this, @mrphillips I'm wondering: what would you change if you wanted to include some pepper flavor in the finished product?

 

[mrphillips]

After talking to my local HBS/microbrewery (Apocalypses Brewing), the secret is steeping fresh peppers in a couple cups of water, adding that to the primary, AND fresh peppers in the secondary. As for the amount of peppers, that I don't know. I was a little leery to add THAT much pepper, but I trust the man who gave me the information. I wasn't going for a straight-up pepper beer, so I opted out of that method. Brew on!

 

[harry_the_face]

So how did it turn out and are you willing to share the recipe?