Last year, around the same time, I brewed a Jalapeño Saison, which was pretty mild in flavor. At first I wasn't all that fond of it to be honest, but Nicki loved it. I had used peppers with the seeds removed to cut back on the spiciness and the beer had an earthy, green pepper flavor to it. The beer grew on me over time and worked really well with the Mexican dishes we made (this makes me hungry for Mexican food now...).
This time I decided to make it spicier by using some seeds as well. The hardest part was actually gauging how much of the garden-grown Jalapeño's seeds to keep. The recipe (see below) requires 3 Jalapeño peppers and I decided to have 1.5 peppers with seeds and the other half without (I basically cut 1 pepper in half and got rid of the seeds of one half). I soon found out how strong those peppers were when I touched the corner of my mouth after washing my hands several times (although I knew that soap doesn't really get rid of the oils). I won't be munching on those Jalapeños any time soon!
Recipe (3 gallons, 70% total efficiency)
This time I decided to make it spicier by using some seeds as well. The hardest part was actually gauging how much of the garden-grown Jalapeño's seeds to keep. The recipe (see below) requires 3 Jalapeño peppers and I decided to have 1.5 peppers with seeds and the other half without (I basically cut 1 pepper in half and got rid of the seeds of one half). I soon found out how strong those peppers were when I touched the corner of my mouth after washing my hands several times (although I knew that soap doesn't really get rid of the oils). I won't be munching on those Jalapeños any time soon!
Recipe (3 gallons, 70% total efficiency)
- 4 lbs 15 oz Belgian 2-row pilsner
- 13.6 oz Caramel/Crystal malt - 20L
- 5 oz Aromatic malt
- 1 oz Munich malt
- 0.14 oz Pacific Jade - 60 mins
- 0.14 oz Pacific Jade - 30 mins
- 0.14 oz Sorachi Ace - 15 mins
- 3 Jalapeño peppers - 10 mins
- 0.14 oz Sorachi Ace - 5 min
- 0.12 oz Sorachi Ace - 0 mins
- 9.9 oz Clear Candi Sugar
- 1 cup Agave nectar
- DCL/Fermentis T-58 yeast
- OG 1.065; FG 1.012; 28 IBU; 8 SRM; ca. 7% ABV
After brewing (and lunch) we bottled our first 3 gallon batch, the Chestnuts Not Allowed brown ale. I was done cleaning everything up around 2 PM, having started heating up the mash water at 7.30.
The rice wine still has a little over a week to go and there's a nice amount of liquid in there, but I had thought that more of the rice would have been broken down by now. Maybe I cooked the rice a little drier than most (I used a 1:1 ratio of water to rice, whereas others use 1.25-1.5 parts of water per part of rice). There will be more experiments in the near future!
The rice wine still has a little over a week to go and there's a nice amount of liquid in there, but I had thought that more of the rice would have been broken down by now. Maybe I cooked the rice a little drier than most (I used a 1:1 ratio of water to rice, whereas others use 1.25-1.5 parts of water per part of rice). There will be more experiments in the near future!