Jalapeno Ale

[the lizard king]

I just used some mildly hot dry peppers called guajillo peppers, fairly commonly used in mexican cuisine. they dont pack as much of a punch like the jap. Anyway I added them to the secondary in a liberty cream ale, let them sit for about 2 weeks or so. I just tasted it today, and you could get the hint and a little heat from the pepper at the end of each sip. HEart burn here I come cause the wife is not going to help me drink this keg... Anyway the advice about the honey sounds like it would be good. I also noticed that the cream ale was more bitter than malty so maybe the peppers would go better with something that would be malt forward and a little sweeter. Eaither way this one will age awhile seeing how I am the only drinker of it. so maybe when I get around to the end of the keg it will be better than the first sip.

[dmtaylor]

For my award-winning jalapeno porter, the peppers are added ON BOTTLING DAY. That's right. In the morning on bottling day, I buy some fresh ripe peppers, chop them all up -- seeds and all -- and boil half of the chopped peppers in a little beer, and soak the other half in hot vodka and/or tequila. Both solutions soak for about 5 hours at room temperature before adding to the beer. Then, just add the liquid to the bottling bucket. This keeps chunks and seeds out of your beer, but adds ALL the flavor and aroma, and most if not all of the heat.

The heat does vary a bit, but based on my experience, a rough guideline is to use about 8 jalapenos for mild heat, 11 or 12 for medium-hot, and more for intense heat. I don't have experience with serranos or others -- not yet.

[bcmaui]

Was at Flat Branch in Columbia, MO a couple days ago and had an interesting twist.

This beer used a blend of the large, mild Anaheim chile (think chile relleno) and the smaller Seranno pepper that packs more heat than a Jalepeno. Definitely more up front aroma and flavor than the other chile beers I have had that you don't notice the heat until 5 seconds or so after you sip it.

http://www.flatbranch.com/beers.asp?7

[TapItGood]

Here's a great chart on the different peppers, their flavor and heat index. I've made beers with California Chile that were great flavor but low heat and with Habaneros that were just too hot on the heat side. I'm going to try a mix of flavor and heat peppers and see what I get. The Mirasol Pepper looks interesting with it's beery like flavor but still packs a punch with 5,000 on the Scoville scale.

http://missvickie.com/howto/spices/pepp ... sdict.html