Strangest Ingredient You Have Used???

[crawfman]

Currently have a saison going with porcinis and figs. First round addition is one package dried porcinis and 1/2# dried figs I carmelized and puréed. Will do a second round addition with 1# figs and one more pack shrooms.


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[JordanKnudson]

These aren't necessarily *that* crazy, but I've used:
-Rose water in a lager (tough to get the quantity right, as the method of taking a small sample and adding until you get the proportion right, then scaling up, doesn't seem to work in this case)
-Pink peppercorns in a wheat beer (basically in place of the more standard coriander)
-Ginger. Used half a pound fresh in secondary with a brown ale, trying to create a "gingersnap" type flavor. It actually turned out with a great taste, but after a few days I started to notice some plastic taste. Turned out I had let some untreated tap water get into the mix at some point (I think when I mixed up priming solution to bottle, and I just wasn't paying attention to what water I was using), and the whole batch went to hell.

 

[Irishpenguin13]

Made a lemongrass and peach ipa. Ended up keeping it as my regular summer brew.

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[Hopinista]

Made a lemongrass and peach ipa. Ended up keeping it as my regular summer brew.

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Recipe? That sounds fantastic!

 

[Ilan34]

I should brew it and sell it at Phish shows and call it, "Hippy Breath."

That's pretty funny, but have you ever been on Phish lot? You'd have a lot more success with a Heady clone.

 

[mb82]

Mint in a Belgian Single. I only added it to a couple of bottles. It was pretty good. Not good enough to do a whole batch of it but different. Now I just muddle up the mint in the glass before pouring the beer whenever I want that flavor.

I am planning on a Sahti with juniper. Really while it is out of the norm for most people I can't say it is weird.

 

[bdknuc2]

Peach IPA recipe please!!!


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[Irishpenguin13]

Recipe? That sounds fantastic!

Its quite a wild ride but here you go:

OG 1.061
FG 1.011

Grain:
15 lbs. Pale malt
1/2 lb victory
1/2 lb honey malt
1 lb crystal

Hops:
1/2 oz simcoe
2 1/2 oz williamette
4 oz chinook
3 oz fuggles

Other:
1 cup pressed lemongrass
7 lbs peaches pitted and pre frozen prior to brewing

152* for 60 min
Sparge 170*
6.25 g

Hops
1 oz simcoe @ 60

30 min:
1/2 oz williamette
1/2 oz chinook
1/2 oz fuggles

15 min:
1/2 oz chinook
1 oz. Fuggles
1/2 oz williamette

10 min:
1/2 oz chinook
1/2 oz williamette
1/2 oz fuggles

5 min:
1/2 oz fuggles
1 oz chinook
1/2 oz williamette
1 c lemongrass

Flame out
1/2 oz simcoe
1/2 oz fuggles
1/2 oz williamette
1/2 oz chinook

2 lbs. Corn sugar dilute with boiling water, cool to 70* add to primary.

3 weeks in primary

rack to secondary on peaches/ 1/2 oz chinook preferably in a sack . F'real...trust me.

ive dry hopped with a few different hops in secondary with the peaches and found 1/2 oz chinook was my favorite, but the above recipe is what ive always used as a solid base.


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[Zepth]

Raising an old thread to quote myself? Yes. Yes indeed.

https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/recipe/beer-of-the-week-potato-vacation-beer/

Come to think of it, I have a bag of potatoes that just hasn't been getting eaten fast enough. This might be an ideal way to get rid of them in a productive fashion.

So I whipped this up with a slight (actually major come to think of it) change in that I used some sweet potatoes and T58 that I had on hand for some reason. Also a little lighter on the colour on account of a Vienna malt being used, I had forgotten to pick up the munich. A little disappointing, this is like a slightly spiced adjunct lager. A little more body, but that's about it. No doubt that's from the T58.

Not saying it turned out being bad, just that for the extra ingredient cost of the potatoes (which isn't much), and the extra work involved I was hoping for something a little special. Perhaps I'll try a second batch using some bulk food store dehydrated potato flakes as an adjunct in the mash later on.

 

[mb82]

I have one upped myself.

Newest oddball ingredient: Cedar. I just brewed a Sahti and will comment about it once it ferments. At this point it is pretty good.

 

[bken620]

Habaneros I grew in containers in my back yard. I brewed a wit bier, something with not a ton of flavor so I could see what the habaneros would taste like. I put in 5 habaneros, one for each gallon brewed.

I also just brewed a chocolate oatmeal stout I'm secondarying it with pb2 (peanut butter).

 

[passedpawn]

Dirty beet, corn flakes, limes, chamomile. Not strange I guess, but it's the strangest I've done. Oh, I did brew with maggots (twice) and weevils, but not intentionally.

 

[Hopinista]

Dirty beet, corn flakes, limes, chamomile. Not strange I guess, but it's the strangest I've done. Oh, I did brew with maggots (twice) and weevils, but not intentionally.

So... how did they taste?

 

[Zepth]

Oh, I did brew with maggots (twice) and weevils, but not intentionally.

Did you use a protein rest on that one?

 

[passedpawn]

So... how did they taste?

Maggot beer ended up slightly infected, so it was a tosser; the maggots got in there during the chilling process, so they weren't disinfected. Weevils have no effect.

 

[DromJohn]

Chrysanthemum in Chrysanthemum Honey Rye Ale
Hawthorn berry in Chateau Jiahu BYO clone.

 

[zmanzorro]

My homebrew team used some prickly pear cactus fruit in a brew on premise competition at Martin House Brewery in Fort Worth. If you see them selling it, it means we won!

 

[Ranman481]

I've done two that used ingredients that I'd never come across in a bottle before. The first one ( and a crowd pleaser ) is a Peach / Tea brew where I used imported white tea leaves instead of hops. I've been asked by SWMBO to make more this summer. The other one I tried ( and need to tweak some more ) was based on ingredients that the Mayans would have had access to...Rose hips, Agave nectar, lime and corn.

 

[VikingChrisColby]

I've made some odd beers over the years. I've brewed with potatoes, sweet potatoes, cocoa powder, Jolly Rancher candies, bread, and even used Mt. Dew (the soda) as my brewing liquor. Here are a couple recipes:

Beelzeboss -- a witbier-like brew with Mt. Dew
http://beerandwinejournal.com/brewed-with-dew/

Sweet Potato ESB -- This is pretty much a straight up ESB, but with a little sweet potato as a starchy adjunct. The sweet potato only adds an orange color, no appreciable flavor or aroma. (If you roasted the sweet potato, that would likely add some flavor, if that's what you wanted.)
http://beerandwinejournal.com/sweet-potato-esb/

Exercise Recovery Ale -- And here's one I'm planning on trying soon; a beer with a little Gatorade added for rehydration after I run.
http://beerandwinejournal.com/exercise-ale/


Chris Colby
Editor
http://beerandwinejournal.com/

 

[dangerbrew]

I've done a lot of crazy beers, but one of my most memorable batches was a traditional Gruit beer brewed with yarrow, mugwort, bog myrtle, wild rosemary, and "dry-hopped" with some heather tips. It almost tasted like a sour to me at first and I was afraid it had gotten infected until I decided to make a tea with those same herbs and realized that that was the same flavor that they'd all contributed to the beer - sour-ish if you will, but not true sour if that makes any sense. It was an interesting experiment that I very much enjoyed drinking, though for any newbies to the craft beer scene who don't have adventurous palates, I wouldn't recommend it.

I'm actually thinking about brewing it again soon as some of my friends were talking about it the other day wanting to know if I'd make another batch of it... Maybe later this summer?

 

[Barley_Bob]

Obviously, someone needs to brew a batch with durian fruit.

 

[bjanat]

Black garlic in a porter. More aroma than flavor.

 

[jhoneycutt]

My homebrew team used some prickly pear cactus fruit in a brew on premise competition at Martin House Brewery in Fort Worth. If you see them selling it, it means we won!

Shiner did a prickly pear beer a year or two ago. May still doing it. I thought it was pretty good. Its the one and only beer my wife has ever liked. May have to get that recipe from you.

 

[zmanzorro]

Shiner did a prickly pear beer a year or two ago. May still doing it. I thought it was pretty good. Its the one and only beer my wife has ever liked. May have to get that recipe from you.

We made a Saison/Tripel hybrid and added the roasted fruit in during the boil and then used pink peppercorns in the secondary. Wait until the prickly pear is in season though. We used some green ones and they were a little sour, so we only used the centers of the fruit. The pinker, the sweeter.

For the recipe, we had to use Martin House's base ingredients (base malt, hops, and yeast), so I do not know what yeast we used. Propbably something proprietary.

 

[KyleWolf]

A girl I was dating really wanted to go off the reservation. we did a "Citrus Oolong Tea Saison" added 3oz of Oolong tea at flameout.

Initially the taste was surprisingly not horrible. but this thing would give you a headache after 1 pint. it was a ridiculous brew that to this day I am a little embarrassed about.

Again, for a girl, I brewed a "Lemongrass Lychee Bavarian Hefe" lemongrass into the mash and boil, lychee into secondary (about 5th batch of beer ever). This was also a horrible thing. the lemongrass imparted a "soapy" quality to the beer and the ester profile (a little bubble-gummy) did not mingle with the lychee like I imagined it would. Overall not my best experiences in brewing. Granted, with considerably more experience under my belt, I think I could actually make the lemongrass lychee wheat relatively drinkable.

 

[12thHoleBrewer]

I'll admit that this was unintentional, but brewing in the fall one day and acorn fell from a tree bounced off the deck and into the brew pot. We just let it go and it didn't have any noticeable effect on the beer but it was kind of a cool story to tell. Of course we named it Acorn Pale Ale.

Other than that, I did make a chocolate mint stout using real mint leaves growing in my yard along with some Hershey's chocolate. I wouldn't recommend the chocolate as it had kind of an oily residue. The mint however seem to work out well. I used a little mesh bag in the secondary and I liked the end result.