tobacco flavor in beer?

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BadBreakfast

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what does it mean to have a "tobacco" flavor to your beer? how do you get that flavor? this is my first post ever and my first brew ever was 3 days ago! i cant stop watching my airlock! its the little things i guess
 
tobacco? if you smoke cigarettes or cigars reminds me of woody and spicy flavors. though i dont know what that means for towards beer. I am new to brewing.
 
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

Best to let this discussion die, before someone does.

If you want to understand something about taste and those "descriptors" that people use, 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 Mp-3

Those flavors come from roasted grains, occaisonally adjuncts like raisins like the above person said. Don't even think about REAL tobacco.
 
im not talking about putting tobacco in my beer! i can see how that would be not only gross but toxic. i'm talking about the taste. was just seeing if anyone knew what malts and stuff to use to get it. ive had a beer that fit this discription. as long as its just a hint its really good
 
im not talking about putting tobacco in my beer! i can see how that would be not only gross but toxic. i'm talking about the taste. was just seeing if anyone knew what malts and stuff to use to get it. ive had a beer that fit this discription. as long as its just a hint its really good

I don't know how this got to 7 posts without someone correcting everyone else. shows up in a lot of smoke beers, and I see it often in big, dark beers as well. Wood can impart this, smoked malt, and a lot of people perceive this from dark roasted malts from time to time.

http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/goose-island-nut-brown-ale/813/1/28/

There's a beer with tobacco in the tasting notes.
 
When my robust porter was very young, it had a tobacco ash type flavor in the finish. It has since dissipated. Probably from the dark roasty malts
 
I don't know how this got to 7 posts without someone correcting everyone else. shows up in a lot of smoke beers, and I see it often in big, dark beers as well. Wood can impart this, smoked malt, and a lot of people perceive this from dark roasted malts from time to time.

http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/goose-island-nut-brown-ale/813/1/28/

There's a beer with tobacco in the tasting notes.

"Subtle notes of..." does NOT mean there's actual tobacco it the beer. It means that the tastes, and smells are evocative of it. It's a reviewer's term, which I have used many times writing reviews. Just like when a wine or beer writer says it has "hints of leather and horse blanket" doesn't mean there's actual leather and sweaty horse blankets in the fermenter. :rolleyes:

I have beer reviews on here where I've described it. It comes up in a lot of big beers with roasted malts and caramel notes.

Believe me if there was a beer brewed with tobacco in it, the BATF, TTB, the FDA and the anti smoking lobby would be all over it and we'd know....They'd be trying to shut that down faster, than they are trying to shut down malternative beverages with guarina and all that crap in red bull and those types of drinks.

Like I said, and we've said a million times when this topic comes up, actual tobacco is dangerous in liquid form.

Those flavors come from grain, come from adjuncts, come from brewing temp and come from yeast.
 
Revvy, no one ever mentioned actually putting tobacco in beer except you. The OP wants to know how to achieve a flavor like tobacco, presumably because he's either tasted beer with that flavor or because he's read tasting notes that include it in the description. Horse dead. No more beating.
 
Official request for new emot:

gu_b_deadhorse.gif
 
thanks everyone. i'll keep this all in mind. and thanks to everyone for the warning about putting tobacco in my beer. you saved my life HAHA
 
I know it's an old thread, but many people Snus and no spitting is involved. A can of "Nick and Johnny Strong" has 22g of Snus, with 11mg/g, for a total of 242 mg. Admittedly, I don't eat it, but I am not dead yet.

Now, Snus is basically tobacco, water, salt, and spices, and contains none of the deleterious additives of major brand cigarettes, dip, or chaw, and uses no combustion in its manufacture. I suspect that a tea from 22g in a five gallon batch would pose no more problem if you drank the whole batch than the alcohol in the beer. I have certainly consumed the better part of a can in a day in the backcountry.

Note that I am in no way recommending this, claiming that is healthful, or suggesting that it would make good beer. However, I do think the fears around unadulterated tobacco are a bit overstated. Use at your own risk.
 
a lethal dose of nicotine is a mere 50mg. . .potent chemical

yep. some very high percentage is burned off in the process of smoking, and chew obviously doesn't get all the nicotine out. there have been many cases of children/pets dying from eating cigarettes, and the amount of nicotine present in 5 or 6 cigarettes is enough to kill.

this is why people don't swallow their chew. and why it makes you puke if you do.

jeffmeh - compare that to the nicorette lozenges (a form where you'll actually ingest 100% of the nicotine), the stronger dose is 4 mg, which they suggest a smoker consume 1 every one to two hours (i used these to quit as a former 1.5 pack/day smoker, and that was a rate i couldn't keep up)
1/ hour, even if you kept up while you slept, is less than 100mg/day.

" The mean lethal dose has been estimated to be 30 to 60 mg (0.5-1.0 mg/kg) (Gosselin, 1988)." per these guys meaning that if you gave 30-60 mg to 100 adults, 50 of them would die.
 
34,000 American motor vehicle deaths in 2008 and somehow driving is still legal. The discussion of the lethality of smoking is overplayed in my opinion. We know it's deadly. They know it's deadly. Let em smoke.

Tobacco flavor is beer is usually a darker, kind of date type flavor. It is usually infused in darker beers over a long time aging. Very good flavor in beer that isnt highly carbonated.
 
34,000 American motor vehicle deaths in 2008 and somehow driving is still legal. The discussion of the lethality of smoking is overplayed in my opinion. We know it's deadly. They know it's deadly. Let em smoke.

Tobacco flavor is beer is usually a darker, kind of date type flavor. It is usually infused in darker beers over a long time aging. Very good flavor in beer that isnt highly carbonated.

just for the record, my figure/post were about nicotine ingestion. it's almost impossible to smoke enough to get nicotine poisoning, with regards to jeffmeh's suggestion of steeping tobacco in the wort.

smoking is bad for you.
so is mcdonalds.
 
just for the record, my figure/post were about nicotine ingestion. it's almost impossible to smoke enough to get nicotine poisoning, with regards to jeffmeh's suggestion of steeping tobacco in the wort.

smoking is bad for you.
so is mcdonalds.

Strange how I could smoke all day and cant go near a McDonalds. ;)

I dont even know where you could realistically get pure nicotine. I know they use it for pesticide. But you have to wear a body suit to handle it.

On the subject of creating a tobacco type flavor in beer, I think if you took some dates and maybe some plums and crushed them and introduced them either in secondary or at flame out it might leave enough residual aroma behind to trick the taste buds into thinking there's some dark tobacco notes in there.
 
couple years ago one of my buddies dropped an unlit cigarette from his mouth into my primary fermenter while peering in... about 5min after pitching the yeast... now THAT is alcohol abuse!
 
Cigar type flavor I assume you are referring to like in Jai Alai by Cigar City.
Jarrylo hops will give it to you if you want to get it.
 
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