tobacco beers? anyone heard of them?

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

BrewinBigD

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 5, 2011
Messages
271
Reaction score
7
Location
Stratham
So, i gre up with my ol grandad(rest his soul) puffin away on pipes as long as i can remember. LOVE the smell of a nice sweet pipe tobacco. Anyone ever jeard of some sort of tobacco stout or porter?? Sounds kinda wird but who knows!

Sent from my MB502 using Home Brew Talk
 
Mmmm. Never thought of it, but I smoke pipe tobacco and would love the aroma of a nice dark blend in a beer somewhere.
 
Well ingesting tobacco is basically swallowing poison so it's not a good idea, you're prone to acute poisoning even if you're a smoker. It'll almost definitely make you really sick to actually swallow it. Even tobacco harvesters can become sick through absorbtion of too much through the skin.

So please, do NOT brew a tobacco beer.

Tobacco smoked malt, on the other hand...
 
Original Choc beer made by the Choctaw Native Americans had tobacco in it, amongst all the other things they put into it. Pete's Place in Krebs, OK makes a beer they formulated based off the Choctaw Beer... sans the tobacco of course. :)
 
That's the beer they got from that guy's trading post in "The Outlaw Josie Wales". But you never actually see it. Sounds like a run what ya brung brew. Wouldn't mind tryin it though. That & the one my Apache ancestors did.
 
You could probably achieve a lot of the same flavors using oak, couldn't you? Look into it.
 
There's a bunch of threads on this topic if you search for it, usually some fool thinks it would be cool to do ...you will find that it is highly toxic. In fact people used to be poisoned by using an extraction from tobbaco.

Don't do it..When you hear of a beer or wine that has essence of tobbacco, that is a descriptor, not actual tobacco flavor.

The leaf extract was a popular pest control method up to the beginning of the 20th century. In 1851, the Belgian chemist Jean Stas was the first to prove the use of tobacco extract as a murder poison in the civilised world. The Belgian count Hippolyte Visart de Bocarmé had poisoned his brother-in-law with tobacco leaf extract in order to acquire some urgently needed money. This was the first exact proof of alkaloid

Those flavors come from roasted grains, occaisonally adjuncts like raisins like the above person said. Don't even think about REAL tobacco.

I wouldn't think about smoking malt with it either...let's see, formaldehyde and about 50 other deadly compounds come out in the smoke and would then cling to the grains...

The stuff that comes out in the smoke which will attach itself to the grain will be more often than not, be just as nasty as the nicotine...How do you think the hickory taste gets from the smoke to the meat when you smoke a brisket for example? It's chemical molecules that cling to and penetrate the meat...the same thing will happen to the grain....the compounds given off in the burning tobacco will attach to the grain...then they will leach into the wort...

Heres what the Center for Disease control says about nicotine poisoning...

Clinical description

After oral ingestion of nicotine, signs and symptoms of nicotine poisoning mimic those for nerve agent or organophosphate poisoning and typically include excess oral secretions, bronchorrhea, diaphoresis, vomiting (common, especially among children), diarrhea, abdominal cramping, confusion, and convulsions. Although tachycardia and hypertension are common, bradycardia and hypotension might also occur as a result of a severe poisoning (1, 2).

This is NOT something you wanna mess with folks...all specultion aside...This is potentially LETHAL!!!!!

A cigar, depending on its size and type, can contain anywhere from 10 to 444 mg of nicotine. Cigar smoke produces 30 times more carbon monoxide than cigarette smoke. During this time, high concentrations of tobacco-specific nitrosamines (TSNAs) are produced. TSNAs are some of the most carcinogenic compounds known to man. Secondly, cigar wrappers are not as porous as cigarette wrappers, making the combustion of a cigar less complete. These two factors result in higher concentrations some of the toxic chemicals in cigars than in cigarettes.

Again, this is NOT how those flavors appear in wines and beers where you appear to taste it....What you taste REMINDS YOU of the flavors...but they are NOT THE ACTUAL MATERIALS!!! It's a METAPHOR....

If you guys aren't grasping this idea...listen to this basic brewing podcast....

May 1, 2008 - Beer Eye for the Wine Guy
Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV brings the thunder to BBR and gives us his perspectives on the art of tasting as he samples homebrew.

Click to Listen

He talks about how we taste, and how it triggers memories of things...

I love a good cigar... smoke em if you got em...but don't CONCENTRATE the chemicals in you beer!

There's some good suggestions in this thread about using woods and lots of dark grains are reminiscent of tobacco, go with those.
 
Thinking of the flavors we often experience as cigar and pipe smokers I can think of PLENTY that are not tobacco. Flavors I often experience can range from leather, earth, coffee, pepper, oak, cedar, clove and or salt. Now that is not all in the same cigar or bowl of tobacco, but some of my most recent tastings. I suggest trying to pin point the flavors/smells you remember from your granddad's pipe and try to add those to your beer. If we are talking about a cavendish smell (aromatic) then maybe cherry, chocolate, walnut, bourbon, rum, coconut are things that modern cavendish pipe tobacco are flavored with to give it that aromatic quality you are looking for and all as far as I know can be added to flavor beer.


I will be trying a 1 gallon batch of american rye ale on top of some spanish cedar in a secondary this weekend as I bottle the rest of the batch!
 
Someone came up with this idea before...

How about putting some grains in an airtight container with a couple cigars or other form of tobacco and "aging" it for a while. Might impart unsmoked tobacco flavors. Then just use the tobacco flavored grain for mashing.

This..I think....would probably be the safest way to do it...kinda like cold steeping coffee...

I think Big kahunna once put a couple pound of grain into his humidor and let it absorb all the aromas of the wood and the tobacco for a couple of weeks or so.
 
I'm all for the tobacco smoked malt idea. Get some loose pipe tobacco (or chop up a cigar) and some fairly neutral wood, make a box for your malt out of some window screen, toss it all in the smoker on low for 12 hours or so, stirring the malt regularly.
 
What about adding anise spice to the beer? Anise is very similar to tobacco aroma, also adding licorice root extract might help bring the tobacco flavor/aroma to the beer with out making it toxic-tasting.

It might be worth a 1 gal experiment to see if the "tobacco" flavor is attainable.
-jefe-
 
I'm all for the tobacco smoked malt idea. Get some loose pipe tobacco (or chop up a cigar) and some fairly neutral wood, make a box for your malt out of some window screen, toss it all in the smoker on low for 12 hours or so, stirring the malt regularly.

I just saw revvy's quote on the chemicals in cigar smoke... I guess I just figured on a relatively small % of the smoke actually "sticking" to the grains.
 
At last month's Deschutes Brewery University (the hops class), they had a sample of rejected hops with a very distinct tobacco aroma. Unfortunately, I can't remember the variety.
 
Heres what the Center for Disease control says about nicotine poisoning...



This is NOT something you wanna mess with folks...all specultion aside...This is potentially LETHAL!!!!!

There's a big difference between nicotine inhalation and nicotine POISONING. The thing I'd be least concerned about is the nicotine, it's a pretty mild drug (and may be heralded as a 'wonder drug' in the future as it seems to have some interesting effects).
 
There's a big difference between nicotine inhalation and nicotine POISONING. The thing I'd be least concerned about is the nicotine, it's a pretty mild drug (and may be heralded as a 'wonder drug' in the future as it seems to have some interesting effects).

But it's an indisputable fact that nicotine extracted into a liquid is lethal......

like I showed in my first post-

The leaf extract was a popular pest control method up to the beginning of the 20th century. In 1851, the Belgian chemist Jean Stas was the first to prove the use of tobacco extract as a murder poison in the civilised world. The Belgian count Hippolyte Visart de Bocarmé had poisoned his brother-in-law with tobacco leaf extract in order to acquire some urgently needed money. This was the first exact proof of alkaloid

This is an interesting discussion I found on some writing forum where some author was looking for information on liquid nicotine poisoning as a murder weapon in a film....the person answering provided plenty of interesting links and info.

First off, let's look at the dosage of liquid nicotine that needs to
be ingested orally to cause a fatal reaction:

liquid nicotine
URL: http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1121636
Quote: "According to the National Capital Poison Center, the lethal
dosage of nicotine in the human body is 40-60mg, although mild signs
of poisoning can show up after consuming as little as 5mg."

Your murderer character would likely want to use the upper end of that
range to ensure death. 60 mg is the amount in many over-the-counter
capsules. Not a huge amount, but not a trace amount either. There is
no way that that much poison would be able to be concentrated into a
single bite of an apple. Any liquid would rapidly diffuse throughout
much of the body of a piece of fruit.

What is the taste and smell of liquid nicotine?

Nicotine and its Derivatives from Tobacco Waste
URL: http://www.tifac.org.in/offer/tlbo/rep/TMS158.htm
Quote: "Nicotine has a bitter taste and a sharp odour."


Nicotine
URL: http://www.inchem.org/documents/pims/chemical/nicotine.htm
Quote: "Nicotine is a liquid alkaloid. It is water soluble and has a
pKa of 8.5. It is a bitter-tasting liquid"

So, by all accounts, the stuff is nasty tasting and nasty smelling.
Probably very noticable in apples, which are quite mild.

So, even if the victim character doesn't notice the bad taste and
smell, what happens after the first poison-laced bite?

NICOTINE
URL: http://www.cepis.ops-oms.org/bvsapud/i/fulltext/nicotine/nicotine.htm
Quote: "Nicotine initially causes a burning sensation in mouth,
throat, esophagus and stomach. Increased salivation follows. Nausea,
vomiting, abdominal pain, and diarrhea are common. Vomiting may occur
very early after tobacco ingestion, minimizing absorption and other
toxic manifestations."

Not likely to cause the victim character to take a second bite.

While some researchers have experimented with prescribing liquid
nicotine as a smoking cure, the dose is very low and the patient knows
that they are taking the cure and will put up with the taste, smell,
and other nasty sensations:

Liquid Nicotine
URL: http://www.thecarolinachannel.com/health/897821/detail.html
Quote: "Researchers at Duke University Medical Center have patented a
nicotine solution and are testing to see if it can help people quit
smoking. The nicotine solution can be added to coffee, tea, soda,
beer, lemonade or other acidic beverages and consumed several times a
day in place of smoking. In a small pilot study, the solution proved
effective. Twenty-five smokers chose a date to quit and were given the
solution to mix into their beverages with instructions to use it as
needed for smoking urges during a 12-week period. Participants drank
between 2.5 milligrams to 10 milligrams of the solution per beverage.
Abstinence rates reported by participants were 28 percent at 4 weeks,
24 percent at 3 months, and 20 percent at 6 months. Side effects of
the oral solution were minimal. Only one participant dropped out of
the study, complaining of a burning sensation at the site of dental
work."

The only mention I found of trying to camouflage the taste and smell
of nicotine for oral consumption is the "Nicotini", a nicotine laced
cocktail. They go to great lengths to cover up the offensive
taste/smell.


So, if you want to use liquid nicotine in your script plot, I suggest
you find another, more plausible way of getting it inside your
fictitious victim.

Further scientific information on nicotine and its effects can be found at:

NICOTINE
URL: http://www.cepis.ops-oms.org/bvsapud/i/fulltext/nicotine/nicotine.htm

Nicotine
URL: http://www.inchem.org/documents/pims/chemical/nicotine.htm


There is a liquid nicotine solution but I would think they extract it in a way that keeps it below a poisonous limit, I wouldn't trust us to do it though.
 
I've gotten to where smelling tobacco, (cigarettes) even a long time after the smoker has left the area, makes me gag! So, IMO, there would be no quicker way to ruin a beer.
Not to mention it is probably very bad for you.
 
I've gotten to where smelling tobacco, (cigarettes) even a long time after the smoker has left the area, makes me gag! So, IMO, there would be no quicker way to ruin a beer.
Not to mention it is probably very bad for you.

But what folks are talking about is not burnt cigarrette tobacco, but the smells associated with raw tobacco, like if you sniffed a nice UNLIT cigar, or perhaps a blended aromatic tobacco like if you did smell someone's nice pipe tobacco, it's a lot different than someone's cigarette smoldering.

It's a lot like folks detect other aroma/taste approximations in barlewines such as leather and thing like that, it's really more of an evocation of the aroma/taste, than actually having leather or tobacco in a beer.

The difference between even sniffing an unlit cigar and an unlit cigarrette are like night and day, there's not a lot of aromatics used in cigarettes.
 
It's a lot like folks detect other aroma/taste approximations in barlewines such as leather and thing like that, it's really more of an evocation of the aroma/taste, than actually having leather or tobacco in a beer.

Hmm, I wonder what effect fermenting in leather water skins would have on a beer...
 
I think the coolest thing maybe to do would be to hook up with the folks who own a nice cigar store, with a large walk in humidor, and see if you could store a few pounds of grain in a non-airtight container for a few months. Maybe in a burlap sack (like the ones you can get basamati rice in, the ones where it has handles) that you could hang up someplace in the humidor. And just let all those amazing cigar aromas penetrate the container and saturate the grain.....
 
Hmm, I wonder what effect fermenting in leather water skins would have on a beer...

That would be interesting....

My family used to have a bunch of leather wineskins from spain....But they don't hold a lot.

OOOH just like using old sherry or wine or bourbon casks, you could use some old wineskins that actually held wine in them.

But most of the Spanish Botas that I've seen are only this big.

Quality leather, hand-made
Traditional pitch lined interior
Size - 1.5 Liters/.33 Gallons

ClassicSpanishWineskin2.jpg
 
I've noticed over the decades that even cigs taste/smell different unlit. Kind of an organic sweetness. As if some quality sweet mild tobacco leaf were used. In the better brands,anyway. But I don't think it's a very good idea at all in a beer. Raw ashtray,yummy!!
 
I suppose if you ordered a couple big leather swatches, you could stitch up a 5 gallon fermenter. I'm thinking you'd want to make it a brett beer.
 
Waitaminute, look at this.

http://botasdevinojb.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10&Itemid=21&lang=en

odre_pellejo_05.jpg


odre_pellejo_01.jpg


Old large wineskin

The wineskin is one of the oldest vessels used by humans. There is ample evidence of its use in ancient Greece and Egypt, as well as various other ancient civilizations in which our ancestors made use of this very popular tool. Its use ranged from water, oil, wine, honey, milk and cereal, to the transport of mercury extracted in the mines of Almaden. Today is used to store wine in warehouses.

Handmade skins with vegetable tanned leather, stitched and sealed inside with resin. The current design incorporates a new high quality spigot, exclusively designed in stainless steel. Include a wooden table to guarantee their correct position at home, allowing better pouring and storage of wine.

Each hide varies in size and shape, each hide is unique.

Jesus Blasco wineskins, with more than a century of experience in the craft, continues to develop skins and hides in the traditional way, adding new elements that enhance and facilitate the use of these ancient vessels.
Materials

Hide
Bakelite mouthpiece
Unique, stainless steel faucet/tap
modified pine resin
Table: wood, made by hand
colour Black
Dimensions: 90x56x48 cm. (Approximate Size, table included).

Sizes

Capacities and dimensions are approximate. Each hide varies in size and shape, each hide is unique. Their sizes depend on the size of the whole skin obtained, the size ranging from 30 to 40 liters.

How bout THAT for a secondary?
 
Yeah, the shape is kind of creepy. Apparently he makes each one from the hide of a whole cow. I don't see my wife letting me bring one in the house.
 
Kinda like someone ate an English breakfast & blew chunks in a bladder. But it's supposed to meat & other stuffins put together.
 
Hey guys, sometime in the last few years someone posted a pic of an antique fermenter they inhertied or bought at an antique store. It was like a leather conical. It was a bag of some sort ( I think leather) that was somewhat conical shaped that had a hole or grommet in the top to hang from a hook. And it had some sort of spigot that might have been ceramic on the bottom. I think it had a faded pic of a bunch of grapes on it.

Does anyone recall that post? Or has anyone ever seen one?
 
wow, the thread took off before I could reply to it!

all those "wonderful flavors" of a cigar are from things done to the tobacco to change it's flavor, it's not pure tobacco. vanilla, cedar, oak, apple spice, etc. why not try to impart THOSE flavors into your grain without the tobacco?
 
wow, the thread took off before I could reply to it!

all those "wonderful flavors" of a cigar are from things done to the tobacco to change it's flavor, it's not pure tobacco. vanilla, cedar, oak, apple spice, etc. why not try to impart THOSE flavors into your grain without the tobacco?

Cigars not made from pure tobacco? If I'm dropping $10-20 each (I don't smoke that often), it'd better be damn close.
 
I'm not a huge scotch guy, but my uncle (who is) bought me a bottle of one of his favorite, Laphroaig.

What smacks me in the face every time I smell and taste it is tobacco. Not just a little "reminds me of tobacco" flavor, but "damn I'm drinking a cigar" flavor. In fact, my wife asked if I smelled cigars the other night while I sipped a glass.

Point being, I'll assume that this scotch uses copious amounts of peat smoked malt. In large enough quantities, peat might just get you where you want to be. I wouldn't like it in a beer, but you might. Check out Laphroaig and let me know what you think!
 
Most $10-$20 cigar are made of 100% tobacco... Hell even the lower dollar amount ones are too. But some are infused or cured. Infused is not my thing AT ALL. But I have had a few higher dollar cigars that had whiskey introduced into the tobacco at one time or another and they were pretty good and 100% tobacco.
 
Back
Top