What's the "weirdest" ingredient you've used?

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Sea water.

Not much of it, though.
That was before I knew anything about water treatment. I added it purely because of sentimental reasons. And believed it had a beneficial impact on the brew.
It might have, indeed. Some extra Na and Cl might mellow somewhat my awful untreated tap water.
 
Protos said:
Sea water.

Not much of it, though.
That was before I knew anything about water treatment. I added it purely because of sentimental reasons. And believed it had a beneficial impact on the brew.
It might have, indeed. Some extra Na and Cl might mellow somewhat my awful untreated tap water.
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Anecdotal story, a distiller from Lost Spirits mentioned when they used sea water for their Leviathan whisky it helped out with the fermentation and gave the finished product umami notes.

Kinda curious to try it out on a sour, how much sea salt did you use?
 
Creme de cacao liqueur to prime a batch once. Had to wait forever for the hot flavor to go away, but once it did, it was delicious.

Breakfast cereals - Honey Nut Cheerios, Cocoa Puffs, Reece's Puffs, Rice Krispies. Not all in the same batch. A different one for different experimental beers... they all turned out great.

A-1 steak sauce in a smoked porter. Way better than I thought it would be.

Graham crackers in a S'mores porter once. It was good, but missed the S'mores mark.

Maple syrup and a chit-ton of oats trying to make an oatmeal brown. It was good, just odd.

I want to try to use different flavors of soda as an experiment sometime - Big Red IPA, Dr. Pepper amber, 7-up golden ale... Some concoction has to work out well.
 
FloppyKnockers said:
A-1 steak sauce in a smoked porter. Way better than I thought it would be.
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bracconiere said:
sounds good to me too. i got some black cardomom sitting around, wasn't any good for food...but who eats anyway! :mug:
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I extracted them in some cask strength whiskey and I find a little goes a long way. The taste and aroma is pretty wild though. You certainly won't need any non-liquid food.
 
Vopiscus said:
I'm curious how that would work. Isn't the nicotine dangerous? I'd imagine perique or some Latakia would make one hell of a campfire beer.
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When my grandfather and I brewed with this we used 1 sun-dried leaf per 2 gallons in the mash. These are unfermented leaves so my understanding the nicotine is not as high. He used to love it and we would brew it once a year till he passed. I have not brewed with it since.
 
CharlaineC said:
When my grandfather and I brewed this we assed 1 leaf per 2 gallons in the mash. These are unfermented leaves so my understanding the nicotine is not as high. He used to love it and we would brew it once a year till he passed. I have not brewed with it since.
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damn now i'm thinking about the melow flavor of chewing rustica leaves, instead of nicatina.....wonder about it in beer.
 
Miraculix said:
The nicotine in the tea of one cigarette's worth of tobacco is enough to kill several people.
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Is it really so? The lethal dose of Nicotine is ca 60 mg when a cigarette contains just about 1 mg. Three packs in a cup could work. A cigarette... I recall a dumb guy in my school who ate a cigarette for a bet. Many of us expected he'd die instantly. He won the bet, felt nothing special to tell about and was the hero of that day :D

Miraculix said:
I'd never use tobacco in anything.
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Me neither. Although there's chewing tobacco which is a very nice thing, I think you'll need to add too much of it for its flavour to be perceptable in the brew. I doubt such a beer would be tasty.
 
Protos said:
Is it really so? The lethal dose of Nicotine is ca 60 mg when a cigarette contains just about 1 mg. Three packs in a cup could work. A cigarette... I recall a dumb guy in my school who ate a cigarette for a bet. Many of us expected he'd die instantly. He won the bet, felt nothing special to tell about and was the hero of that day :D


Me neither. Although there's chewing tobacco which is a very nice thing, I think you'll need to add too much of it for its flavour to be perceptable in the brew. I doubt such a beer would be tasty.
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The amount you get into your body through smoking it is significantly lower than the whole nicotine inside. Most of it just gets burned. A tea solves almost all of it and makes it accessible to your body. Your friend was lucky. Maybe the extraction needs heat?

A friend of mine took accidently a sip from a beer bottle with some buds inside and swallowed it. Man this guy got really really sick. Although he threw up relatively quickly afterwards, he was still heavily poisoned. And he was a smoker himself, so his body was used to get low doses of nicotine.
 
Protos said:
Me neither.
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Although... I must say, the CharlaineC's report above of adding small doses of sun-dried tobacco leaf to the mash sounds interesting. Need to research it further how traditional it is. If anything, the Nicotine content in unfermented tobacco, leaf for leaf, is higher than in the fermented.
I grow half a dozen plants of Mapacho on my flowerbed, which is very strong and rustic. I strenghten my pipe mixtures with it when I'm feeling weird. Gonna harvest it in September. Little would go a long way in a beer, I think.
What if... Mapacho Saison microbatch, anyone. No, not a Saison. Tobacco beer needs some chewier and sweeter base, I suppose. A Mapacho Rye Kveik?
@CharlaineC, what was the kind of beer you brewed with Tobacco?

I think I won't die from such a beer 🙃 as I happen to be highly tolerant of Nicotine (I don't find Gawith & Hoggart's Dark Plug or Peterson's Irish Flake too strong, smoke them in unfiltered pipes and inhale most of the time).
 
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Did a spiced sweet potato ale once with 5lbs of roasted sweet potatoes. If I ever do it again, I'l use canned sweet potatoes and way less spice. Still, made an interesting beer.

It also got infected and made an interesting sour. 🤢
 
Protos said:
Although... I must say, the CharlaineC's report above of adding small doses of sun-dried tobacco leaf to the mash sounds interesting. Need to research it further how traditional it is. If anything, the Nicotine content in unfermented tobacco, leaf for leaf, is higher than in the fermented.
I grow half a dozen plants of Mapacho on my flowerbed, which is very strong and rustic. I strenghten my pipe mixtures with it when I'm feeling weird. Gonna harvest it in September. Little would go a long way in a beer, I think.
What if... Mapacho Saison microbatch, anyone. No, not a Saison. Tobacco beer needs some chewier and sweeter base, I suppose. A Mapacho Rye Kveik?
@CharlaineC, what was the kind of beer you brewed with Tobacco?

I think I won't die from such a beer 🙃 as I happen to be highly tolerant of Nicotine (I don't find Gawith & Hoggart's Dark Plug or Peterson's Irish Flake too strong, smoke them in unfiltered pipes and inhale most of the time).
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My grandfather used it in porters and stouts. I don't recall him doing anything special except adding the one leaf to the bottom of the mash per 2 gallons or so. He always used the largest leaves he could find in his garden. I'll check with my aunt and see is she remembers anything else about how he did it.
 
JAReeves said:
Was it an awkward fake sweetener flavor?
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Naw it was the best chocolate stout ive made to date. I may like my stouts a little sweeter than most but ive done everything to make my stout sweet and after a while it starts to fade, so I saw a video that back sweetened with it for a sparkling wine and decided to try it in a stout, came out perfect honestly but best at a month of sitting and relaxing. Its not as sweet as regular sugar but has ZERO fake sugar taste. I wanna put a half cup in a golden strong but i know ill be crucified for it.
 
deuc224 said:
Naw it was the best chocolate stout ive made to date. I may like my stouts a little sweeter than most but ive done everything to make my stout sweet and after a while it starts to fade, so I saw a video that back sweetened with it for a sparkling wine and decided to try it in a stout, came out perfect honestly but best at a month of sitting and relaxing. Its not as sweet as regular sugar but has ZERO fake sugar taste. I wanna put a half cup in a golden strong but i know ill be crucified for it.
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Thank you for your insight, I am always looking for a backsweetener that isn't Lactose. A lot of my friends/drinkers and myself are intolerant to outright allergic. Nothing like going to a brewery which doesn't label its beers properly and have one of your friends projectile vomit and break out into hives after a few sips. We were worried we needed an Epipen. Haven't been back to that brewery since.
 
JAReeves said:
Thank you for your insight, I am always looking for a backsweetener that isn't Lactose. A lot of my friends/drinkers and myself are intolerant to outright allergic. Nothing like going to a brewery which doesn't label its beers properly and have one of your friends projectile vomit and break out into hives after a few sips. We were worried we needed an Epipen. Haven't been back to that brewery since.
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Wow man im sorry, yeah man there is another plant based sugar but i heard it messes with your stomach a bit so this one was the best one i found and does a great job back sweetening beers or wines. Give it a try.
 
Not for brewing, but I use monk fruit sweetener a lot in cooking. I actually has a large percentage of erythritol in it. It’s a natural sweetener, no artificial flavor. It has a bit of mouth cooling effect. It is not fermentable so it would produce a produce a stable sweetness in beer or cider. I don’t think it would add body like lactose or maltodextrin. It is sweetener than either of those.

@Jayjay1976 is considering putting German Stollen bread in a beer.
 
Jayjay1976 said:
late to the party. Maybe I should distill it!!!
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i'm really trying to think of something funnier to say then, "frosted flakes have been used, so yes...and it'd still be stollen then!"

but honestly, now i'm waiting for the thread where someone raids the continental breakfast lounge at the motel! :mug:
 
Just made a floral IPA with a bunch floral hops and then added rose and lavender flowers to last 5 mins of the boil. It still got to carbonate but out of the fermenter had very nice flower smell and flower tea like taste. I will be very interested in seeing the flavor changes as it ages and carbonates.
 
jturman35 said:
I used Rosemary as a dry hop in a Rosemary Pale ale that was really good.
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Rosemary is almost always used in savory dishes but to me it can be sweet enough to work in a dessert or a beer! My wife is overly sensitive to it so I don't often cook with it but as a subtle top note in a beer is a great idea! It can be overly piney when cooked but used raw and lightly it has a really sweet, dry floral thing going on that reminds me of fresh sage and lavender. Curious to hear how it turns out!
 
Nothing groundbreaking, but I brewed a Gruit today with:

juniper berries
ceylon cinnamon;
bog myrtle/sweet gale;
rosemary;
mace;
California bay laurel leaves.

All first time ingredients for me.

I resisted the urge to go even further with camomile, ginger, wormwood, and/or mugwort. But I now have those to potentially use later this year.
 
I used 10 grams of Rosemary as a Dry hop addition. Basically just made Rosemary tincture using Vodka and threw the hole thing in. I made this pale ale back in 2018 but according to my notes the Rosemary was not overwhelming when paired with Citra/Columbus/Nelson Sauvin. It was hardly noticeable after a month which tells me you could add more.
 
pdxal said:
Currently brewing a beer using used ume from making umeshu.

Perhaps a frozen pineapple IPA for you? -not sure what you could do with the whey powder...
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I made a tripel where we added umeshu after primary fermentation in place of using candy sugar. The beer was phenomenal!

The sugar from the umeshu fermented out completely and the ume flavor added a nice acidity
 

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