Batch 7
I'm going to try a variation on the chili pepper lager from the clones book I got for Christmas. I'll be using an ale yeast instead of a lager yeast simply because I don't have a good way of holding the wort at a low enough temperature, or of properly lagering the beer after bottling, so it'll have to make due with that.
- 6.6 lbs. (2 cans) pilsen light LME
- 1 lbs. Dextrine malt
- .5 lbs vienna malt
- 9 ox flaked maize
- 2 oz Hallertau hops
- 1 oz mt hood hops
- Nottingham ale yeast
- 1 tsp irish moss
- 35 hot dried peppers (7 kinds, one per bottle, 5 bottles of each plus 7 bottles of unpeppered)
We brought ~2 gallons of water to ~150F and soaked the malts and flaked maize for 45 minutes, trying to keep the temperature around that mark. After removing the malt bag, we added about a gallon of cold water, returned the kettle to heat, and brought it up to ~180F. Turned off the heat, added the LME, and turned the heat back on. At about 190F, we added the hallertau hops and started a 1 hour timer. At 30 minutes we added the irish moss. At the end of the hour, we removed the wort from heat, added the mt hood hops, and cooled in a sink of cold water to 100F. meanwhile I followed the directions on the yeast pack and added the dry yeast to 4 oz of 92F water, allowed to sit for 15 minutes. I put the warm wort into the fermenter, topped up to 5 gallons, and pitched the yeast at 72F. -Morrigu 21:11, 18 April 2010 (EST)
IG: 1.042@72F = 1.043@68F
Racked to secondary. Light golden color, somewhat cloudy, mild, and well balanced. It has good potential just on its own as a light ale. We'll see what happens when I add evil... I mean hot peppers to it on bottling. Hopefully the cloudiness will settle out during secondary. -Morrigu 19:58, 25 April 2010 (EST)
Bottled. We used 7 different kinds of peppers while bottling. Light golden color, light beer flavor, but with an odd finish. -Morrigu 09:41, 10 May 2010 (EST)
FSG: 1.010@64F = 1.010@68F
ABV: 4.3%
After tasting, the plain beer is a drinkable but not exciting pale ale. Of the peppered bottles, 6 was pretty painfully hot, but 3 and 7 were the winners for the best aroma, flavor, and balanced heat. 2 (The chipotle) was deemed a little odd. The smokiness of the pepper would go better in a stout than the pale ale. All in all, a worthy experiment, but not one to repeat. -Morrigu 11:40, 5 July 2010 (EST)
This batch was started and bottled with assistance from Sinic.
