Brewing with Mushrooms
If you want to give someone a lesson in the primary modalities of taste — sweet, bitter, sour, salty, and savory — there’s perhaps no easier place to start than with craft beer. Indeed, over the past few decades, what else has served to revive the merits of bitterness like West Coast IPA? Sweetness? That’s easy to find too, of course. Sour? Another huge trend in the beer world, opening up yet another category of flavor. Salty, admittedly, might not be a major role player in our educational beer lineup, outside of perhaps a Gose — which is probably fine, considering how prevalent salt already is in so much of our food. Yet finally, there’s the mercurial world of umami, the dimension of savoriness. How would one even go about making a beer savory? And considering that savory is associated with rich, hearty flavors, could that even be good?
To find one of the world’s best sources of umami, one has only to turn to the siblings of our precious fermenting agents. Brewer’s yeast is of course a member of the kingdom of fungi, and so, sliding just a few spots over on the tree of life, we find mushrooms. The mushrooms most prized by foodies are, unsurprisingly, probably the best place to start when considering uniting our fungal cousins in the form of a beer. Chanterelle mushrooms can lend a slight buttery, umami-infusing texture, with a light, fruit, apricot-like aroma that pairs well with saisons and wild ales. Oyster mushrooms can evoke subtly earthy flavors. Porcini impart a brighter, richer sort of earthiness, ideal for a more straightforward “mushroom” character. Shiitake mushrooms — one of the best-known varieties in America that’s managed to retain a bit of an exotic air — can work well to punch up a beer’s funky qualities.
Planning the recipe & Brewing with mushrooms
As some varieties of mushroom can be quite pungent, the first step in brewing a mushroom beer should probably be one of calibration. Do you want to use mushrooms to accent certain qualities of the base beer, or do you want to brew an overtly mushroom-flavored beer?
Making a tincture or tea and adding it in measured doses to an existing beer is a great way to test out the flavor of the mushrooms in advance, honing in on the right base style for the pairing. Mushrooms will sometimes lose certain aspects of their character once added to alcohol, often becoming less earthy and somewhat more savory or rich, so this advance taste testing can pay dividends later. When measured carefully, a tincture will also allow you to hit the right dosage for the final product, saving you from a potential umami-bomb if a slight funk was all that you really desired.
Yet mushrooms are certainly not limited exclusively to funk. One of the most exciting aspects of brewing with exotic and unusual ingredients is
discovering unique, yet specific flavors where one least expects them, and mushrooms hold great potential in this regard. While formalizing an idea for a mushroom stout at Kent Falls Brewing Company in Kent, Connecticut, I originally balked at the price when discussing the concept with Co-Owner Barry Labendz. Spending hundreds of dollars on a relatively small amount of mushrooms felt hard to justify, until we considered that their pungent, maple-like character offered a perfect substitute for another, even more expensive ingredient. Candy cap mushrooms have the unexpected distinction of smelling and tasting exactly like maple syrup. Maple syrup itself is a frustratingly delicate ingredient to brew with. As with many sugar-dense ingredients, the fermentation tends to carry off much of the precious flavor that you’d prefer to stick around. Compared to the cost of an adequate amount of syrup, candy cap mushrooms were practically a bargain. Not only that, but they wouldn’t noticeably budge the beer’s terminal gravity, eliminating many of the concerns with stability and residual sugar that adding massive amounts of syrup posed.
Dried mushrooms from a quality source are easy to work with, and in most cases, can be added directly to the fermenter to impart their flavor. Extra care with calibrating your dosage with a tincture in advance can ultimately make life easier later on, as the measured dose of mushrooms can then be steeped in your fermenter or secondary vessel with little worry. Brewing with candy caps at Kent Falls, we knew we wanted to saturate as much character as possible into the rich imperial stout base. When the mushrooms arrived, I found they were one of the most pungently aromatic ingredients I had ever worked with — I could smell the distinctly maple character through the packaging from ten steps away. We settled on using just 1 lb. (450 g), for a 30-barrel (35 hectoliter) batch of stout, or the equivalent of just 2 grams in a 5-gallon (19-L) batch. The result was a pleasant, lingering maple note, subtle but very persistent. For an even more pungent maple character, at a smaller and more economical scale, a brewer could safely double the dosage.
At this stage, one can simply add a mushroom tincture to the fermented beer, or add a measured amount of mushrooms directly to the fermenter. With such a pungent ingredient, a post-ferment steeping for just a few days is all that’s required to capture the flavor thoroughly.
If mushrooms can cement the flavor profile of a beer as bold and rich as an imperial stout, what else can they do? Diving into the world of mushrooms feels a lot like first immersing oneself in the vast potential of homebrewing — you realize swiftly that there are far more out there than you had even imagined.
Sourcing Mushrooms
Mushrooms do pose one particularly notable caveat compared to most other ingredients found in a brewery. Mushroom foraging is an ancient and popular hobby, but it requires a great deal of expertise, as the results can be potentially dangerous when a mushroom is misidentified.
Perhaps the greatest factor keeping mushroom beers from crossing a mainstream threshold is how difficult, or expensive, it can be to source many of the most flavorful and exotic mushrooms. While mankind may have landed on the moon and figured out how to edit our very DNA, there are still a surprising number of highly sought-after mushroom species that we don’t know how to reliably grow in a domesticated environment. These varieties, which must be foraged in the wild, command a hefty price tag, sometimes hundreds of dollars per pound (0.45 kg). Some breweries oriented around local ingredients work with professional mushroom foragers to source their elusive flavorful fungi, but this can grow quite expensive. Here is another advantage homebrewers have over large professional operations: Homebrewing requires far less of an ingredient, making its application more forgiving on the wallet and more apt for experimentation. For instance, a quick internet search for dried candy cap mushrooms turns up various retailers selling quantities of an ounce (28 g) or less for under $50. For the recipe below, that’s just a few dollars a batch on mushrooms.
It must be said: Never consume a mushroom found in the wild unless you are an expert or are working with an expert mushroom forager. There are enough varieties of poisonous mushrooms (and mushrooms that simply aren’t edible and will cause an unpleasant response if consumed) that it’s truly not something an amateur should attempt. Avoid a trip to the hospital, or worse, and simply buy mushrooms foraged or grown by experts. Fortunately, most culinary varieties can be found dried and packaged from reliable sources.
To date, scientists have classified about 14,000 different species of mushrooms. That’s obviously quite a lot — but it’s estimated that there exist somewhere between 2 and 5 million species of fungi, most of them unknown and unstudied. It’s exciting to explore a new horizon, especially when it might taste like maple syrup, or something even more curious. But sometimes, too, it’s just as exciting to realize that horizon may be too vast to ever be fully explored.
Candy Cap Mushroom Imperial Stout
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.084 FG = 1.021
IBU = 60 SRM = 41 ABV = 8.2%
Candy cap mushrooms impart a distinct flavor and aroma of maple syrup, but unlike syrup those qualities are not lost in fermentation. A little goes a long way with these mushrooms.
Ingredients
13 lbs. (5.9 kg) 2-row malt
1 lb. (0.45 kg) brown malt
1 lb. (0.45 kg) flaked oats
1 lb. (0.45 kg) Carafa® III malt
1 lb. (0.45 kg) dextrose sugar (10 min.)
12.75 AAU Brewers Gold hops (60 min.) (1.5 oz./42 g at 8.5% alpha acids)
12.75 AAU Brewers Gold hops (10 min.) (1.5 oz./42 g at 8.5% alpha acids)
0.07–0.14 oz. (2–4 g) dried candy cap mushrooms (secondary)
Wyeast 1056 (American Ale), White Labs WLP001 (California Ale), or SafAle US-05 yeast
2⁄3 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by step
This is a single step infusion mash. Heat 4 gallons (15 L) of strike water to 168 °F (76 °C). Stir in the grains, ensuring no dough balls are left. Mash should stabilize at 154 °F (68 °C). Hold at this temperature for 60 minutes then begin your lautering process. Sparge with enough water to collect 7 gallons (26.5 L) of wort in your kettle. Boil for 90 minutes adding hops and corn sugar at the times indicated.
After the boil is complete, chill the wort down to fermentation temperature and pitch the yeast. Be sure to aerate the wort properly and pitch enough yeast if using a liquid strain. Use two sachets if using a dry yeast strain; aeration is not needed. Ferment at 69–72 °F (20–22 °C) for two weeks.
The dried candy cap mushrooms are added during secondary a week before packaging. Two grams will impart a more subtle hint of maple, while 4 grams should impart a pronounced, lingering maple character. It’s recommended to start at the low end of the addition rate the first time brewing this recipe (you can always make a steeped mushroom tea to add after fermentation if you desire more character from the mushrooms).
After a week, rack off the mushrooms and bottle or keg as usual.
Candy Cap Mushroom Imperial Stout
(5 gallons/19 L, extract with grains)
OG = 1.084 FG = 1.021}
IBU = 60 SRM = 41 ABV = 8.2%
Ingredients
7.5 lbs. (3.4 kg) golden dried malt extract
1 lb. (0.45 kg) Carafa® III malt
0.5 lb. (0.23 kg) Carafoam®
0.5 lb. (0.23 kg) crystal malt (60 °L)
1 lb. (0.45 kg) dextrose sugar (10 min.)
12.75 AAU Brewers Gold hops (60 min.) (1.5 oz./42 g at 8.5% alpha acids)
12.75 AAU Brewers Gold hops (10 min.) (1.5 oz./42 g at 8.5% alpha acids)
0.07–0.14 oz. (2–4 g) dried candy cap mushrooms (secondary)
Wyeast 1056 (American Ale), White Labs WLP001 (California Ale), or SafAle US-05 yeast
2⁄3 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by step
Begin by heating 5 gallons (19 L) of water in your kettle. Place crushed grain in a muslin bag and submerge in the water. Allow the grains to steep as the water heats up to 168 °C (76 °C). Remove grains allowing liquid to drip back in the kettle. Remove kettle from heat and stir in the dried malt extract. Once the extract is fully dissolved, turn heat back on and bring wort to a boil. Boil for a total of 60 minutes adding hops and sugar at the times indicated.
After the boil is complete, chill the wort to fermentation temperature. Transfer to a fermenter and top off to 5 gallons (19 L). Pitch the yeast. Be sure to aerate the wort properly and pitch enough yeast if using a liquid strain. Use two sachets if using a dry yeast strain; aeration is not needed. Ferment at 69–72 °F (20–22 °C) for two weeks.
The dried candy cap mushrooms are added during secondary a week before packaging. Two grams will impart a more subtle hint of maple, while 4 grams should impart a pronounced, lingering maple character (you can always make a mushroom tea to add after fermentation if you desire more character from the mushrooms). After a week, rack off the mushrooms and bottle or keg as usual.
