Smoked Mesquite Bean Saison

[troy2000]

I haven't brewed anything for about a year. Didn't plan it that way; life just kept getting in the way. So I set out to brew a nice, straightforward saison just to get back into the groove. Then I noticed all sorts of mesquite beans laying around outside my travel trailer, and a little light bulb came on: mesquite bean pods are sweet. If something's sweet it has sugar, and sugar can be fermented....

Instead of being hollow shells, mesquite bean pods have a solid pulp surrounding the small hard seeds. When they're dry, they can run anywhere from 30% to 50% sugar by weight. Unfortunately, the mesquite trees in the park where my trailer was setting at the time are a South American variety. Supposedly their pods aren't as sweet as the local ones, and have a chalky taste. So if I wanted to make beer, my first task was to round up some native pods instead.

No problem. A friend at work brought me two cardboard boxes of them, from two trees behind his house. I haven't seen the actual trees, but looking at the pods I'd one is a velvet mesquite and the other a honey mesquite. I chose the ones that look like they're from a velvet mesquite, because they tasted sweeter when I bit off a piece.

The little holes are from Bruchid beetles. These are tiny, colorful critters who also infest commercial bean crops. They lay single eggs on beans or pods. When the larvae hatch they burrow under the surface, and emerge after they've developed. You're liable to see the holes on just about any batch of mesquite pods, whether they're picked off the tree or gathered from the ground.

If someone is squeamish, I suppose they could go through the pods and discard those with holes. Personally I figure the holes mean the little buggers are mostly gone, and if there are any left they're so small they won't drink much anyway.

I intended to attach a picture of the mesquite pods I used, but my laptop suddenly refuses to recognize the existence of my phone when I connect the two. So I can't transfer any photo's until I figure out what changed. I absolutely hate Windows 10 sometimes; getting it to do what I want is like trying to push a wet noodle.


To be continued...

 

[Yeroc]

I've never tasted a mesquite bean so have no idea what it tastes like, but I'm curious to hear more about how you're planning to use the beans.

 

[troy2000]

Slight progress on the photo's: my laptop now admits my phone is connected. But when I hit <import pictures and videos> it says there are none. !@#$%...

Anyway, back to the subject: mesquite beans themselves are rock-hard little bundles of protein and nutrition. It takes a stone metate or hammer mill to crack or grind them. But we're after the sugar in the pods anyway, not what's in the beans.

If you bite off a chunk of mesquite pod, it's mild, sweet and nutty; you could believe you were munching a tree nut of some sort if the texture were different. But toasting them brings out more flavor, and the darker you toast them the stronger and more complex the flavors get. Eventually, you get caramelized sugars and flavors that remind some people of cocoa, coffee, black molasses, vanilla, etc. I'm not a professional taster, so it just reminds me of mesquite.

I started out figuring I'd just make the mesquite a subtle background flavor in a saison. So I broke up about two pounds of pods, and pan-roasted them to a dark tan by shaking them over a stove burner like I was roasting coffee beans. The flavor was pleasing, but not spectacular. So I decided to get crazy.

I grabbed another couple of pounds, broke them into pieces, and threw them in my smoker. The obvious source of smoke would've been mesquite chips, but all I had on hand were whiskey barrel oak chips. Close enough...

I found out that like coffee beans, mesquite pods sit there innocently looking back at you for what seems forever, then suddenly go off. I turned my back for a couple of minutes to get a beer, and when I turned back the pan was smoking, caramelized sugars were oozing out the broken ends, and some of the pieces were almost charred.

 

[troy2000]

The next step was to steep the pods in hot water. Basically like mashing them, except that the sugar's already there and no enzymes are needed. Most people who do this boil down the results to make mesquite syrup.

Supposedly the darker you roast the pods, the less time you need to extract the sugar and flavors. But I tossed them into my mash tun, covered them with water, and held them at 150 f for about three hours; I wanted all the sugar and flavor I could get. When I was browsing online, some people suggested boiling them. But others said that extracts tannins and adds bitterness, which makes sense to me.

After three hours, I had about a gallon and a half of black, rich-smelling liquor. I didn't see any point in boiling it down into syrup before using it, so I just drained it off into a stainless steel pot, covered it well and stuck it in the fridge. I checked the specific gravity, and was surprised to find it was only about 1.03; maybe I burned some of the sugar by roasting so dark.

The plan was to brew three days later when I had time off; I work rotating 12-hour shifts in chunks of three and four days or nights at a time. But I wound up working overtime, and the pot sat for over a week. I had been careful about sanitizing everything and keeping it covered tightly with plastic wrap, but I was still worried enough to spend a lunch break bringing it to a boil for a few minutes before sticking it back in the fridge.

Next: the actual brew day. I'm holding off until I can get my son to troubleshoot my inability to import photo's and videos from my phone; this thread really needs pictures.

 

[troy2000]

OK, I give up on the pictures. Haven't managed to cross paths with my son the electronics/computer whiz, and still haven't figured out why every computer I hook my phone up to insists there's nothing to import. At least I have it narrowed down to the phone now.

On to the brew day... to put it succinctly, it was a disaster. For starters, I got all set up to brew, went to the fridge where I was keeping my hops and yeasts in the freezer, and found out some genius had thrown out the grocery bag containing the hops. So I ordered a pound of Willamette pellets on Amazon, because I have Amazon Prime and qualified for free next-day delivery. Was actually going to order some others, but figured I'd play with the Willamette first and see what I thought of it. Two days later I tried again...

You'd be amazed how scattered and filthy brewing equipment can get when it sets around for over a year. It took me over two hours just to round everything up, scrub it, and then sanitize it all.

Next I found I had left the heavy-duty drill I power my Corona corn-grinder-in-a-bucket grain mill with, and the smaller one I had with me was woefully underpowered. I finally gave up, emptied the hopper and started over, pouring a steady trickle of grain into the hoper with one hand and running the drill with the other. Wound up with more flour than usual doing that; not sure why.

On to the mash... I blew my strike water temp calculations completely somehow. By the time I poured in enough hot water to get up to temp, the lid on my Igloo mash tun setup was floating. Then when I tried to mash out, I got not a drop out of the valve.

Turned out that while doughing in, my paddle knocked loose the tubing between my false bottom and the valve. It's the second time I've done that, and it'll never happen again. I wedged an over-long piece of tubing into place so tightly it'll probably be easier to build another mash tun than to pull the false bottom out of this one...

After I poured the mash into buckets, disassembled the false bottom and valve and put it all back together, I finally mashed out. I thought about adding the mesquite liquor to the sparge water, but wound up just adding it to the boil kettle instead.

The final insult came when I was cooking up the Belgian candi sugar. My digital thermometer quit working, and I over-cooked the sugar. Didn't realize the temperature read was abnormally low, until the sugar started turning into rock candy in the pan. I wound up dropping the cast iron pan into the boil, and leaving it until the sugar dissolved.

I finished up the brew day with no real problems, stuck my carboy (fancy name for a 5-gal Arrowhead water bottle from the '60's) in the back of my pickup, and started home. Did I tie it down? Noooo... I was a tired idiot, and decided I was just gonna drive real slow and careful.

Which lasted until some idiot in a semi changed lanes straight into me, and I had to simultaneously hit my brakes and swerve. I got home with about two gallons of wort, and found out the STC-1000 temp controller on the little fridge I use for a fermenting chamber was on strike. So I set the carboy in the middle of the travel trailer I stay in at work, and went to bed.

The next morning I had an impressive head of krausen for such a small batch. So I set the trailer's AC at 85 degrees (I was using Belle Saison yeast), and headed home. A week later when I got back I bottled, and wound up with an 18 pack of beer. I had rewired the STC-1000 by then, so I stuck them in my fermenting fridge to condition. I cracked one open after about a week - and surprisingly, it's pretty good beer in spite of everything. Should be ready to stick in the fridge and start drinking in another few days...

On to the second mesquite brew day, next post. I promise this one went almost smoothly, and I'll get into all the recipe details, etc.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Whatcha gonna name it?

 

[argiloso]

Jester King did a mesquite beer... it was pretty good I thought

http://jesterkingbrewery.com/introducing-cerveza-de-mezquite

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

That is an impressive head on that glass.