sMOsh habanero secondary question

[CU_tony]

I made a 5gal SMASH with Marris Otter and Challenger

10lbs Marris Otter
1oz Challenger 60min
.5oz Challenger 30min
.5oz Challenger 15min
.5oz Challenger 0min
.5oz Challenger dry hop 7 days

safe ale 05 yeast

I brewed on the 10th OG 1.055 by the 22nd the samples were consistent at 1.007 so I racked to secondary for the first time while splitting the batch.
(Also I have to add that this batch is much better than I initially expected given the weird look I got from the LHBS worker when I brought up these plans (and even worse of a look when I mentioned my desire to play with habaneros up next))

3gal stayed neutral
1gal got 3 grams of fresh habanero that had soaked in 30ml vodka for 24 hours
1gal got 3 grams of freshly roasted fresh habaneros that were soaked in 30ml vodka for 24 hours as well.

I noticed that the roasted habaneros were lighter and therefore took almost twice as many to match the weight of the fresh habaneros at the time but didnt think much of it.

I was planning on letting the secondary sit for 1 week before bottling all three carboys, however today I took a tiny sample from both 1gal carboys today:
Fresh - largely unchanged from the standard beer, a mild almost tickle of spice on the back of the throat.
Roasted - tastes GREAT, almost got a smokey hint from the roast part maybe, however it has a good bit of a kick at that comes out of nowhere at the end.

Now Im wondering, how much more spice can be expected to be drawn out of the peppers if left for a few more days... IE is most of the capsaicin drawn out initially or will it continue to get spicier the longer it sits?

The goal of this experiment was to test the flavors given off of fresh vs roasted habs (I like cooking with and grow a bunch of these guys) so as it is I think Ill add at least 1/2gal of the 3gal control to tone down the spice level so I can compare the two, should I cold crash these carboys tonight and bottle tomorrow or let it ride till friday?

 

[Pappers_]

I have no idea, really, but that sounds really interesting! My only advice would be that carbonation and serving temperature do impact our perception of spice, so don't be surprised if its a little different from your non-carbonated warm samples.

 

[Rockn_M]

I always thought the longer the peppers sits the spicier it will be become. But like Pappers stated that the carbonation and serving temp will effect the spice.

 

[TorMag]

I just did a batch of Pineapple Habanero IPA, turned out awesome. 1 pepper pureed when in the boil with 15 minutes left. 1 went chopped up in the secondary with the dry hops for 7 days. Great flavor.

To your question. My guess, you needed more peppers with the roasted because you have cooked out the water weight of the peppers when roasting, but the "heat" of the pepper does not get cooked out and becomes more concentrated. So you essentially added much more heat with the roasted peppers.

 

[woo_pig]

When you soaked them in Vodka you stripped the heat out.

 

[CU_tony]

I dumped in the vodka with the peppers, it was what I think a negligible amount.
The roasted habanero batch did indeed taste a bit spicier yesterday so I threw them into the fridge for a cold crash and will be bottling tomorrow.
At this point I think I will add half a gallon of the control SMOsh wort to the roasted and taste to see if that helps cut the burn and bring out the flavor a bit.
@TorMag that is exactly what has happened with the peppers... I was so hung up about matching weights to be "the same" for testing purposes I didnt think about why the roasted slices were lighter. In the future if I wanted to side by side test maybe Ill weigh out fresh peppers and roast those separately..

Aside from anything interesting tomorrow I will likely post back in about 3 weeks with some results.

 

[depper]

I made a Habanero IPA where I made a tincture and used that for my heat. I took 3 habanero peppers, diced them up (seeds were taken out) and put them in vodka for a couple weeks. On bottling day, I drained the peppers out and added the tincture to the bottling bucket until I got the heat I desired. I made sure to make it a little hotter than I wanted to drink because the heat will go down a little over time. After a couple of weeks in the bottle it was perfect! You might need to soak the peppers longer for more of a spice taste.

BTW, I never secondary-ed this beer... Straight from primary to bottling bucket.

 

[CU_tony]

I bottled the two pepper tests and the control the other day.
I ended up adding ~.6gal of the control to the roasted hab batch to even out the piquancy before priming and bottling.

Both the fresh and the roasted batches tasted delicious and had a nice throat tingling finish that Im interested to revisit in <3 weeks after the bottles have carbed up.