Experimental Brewing with Veggies, Pork & Chicken
To say homebrewers are a creative group is an understatement. We’ve all seen posts like this on brewing forums: “I want to brew a Dijon mustard red wine celery beer. How much red wine should I use? Should I add the celery to the boil or dry celery in secondary?” Just as you’re about to post an answer to the effect of, “On what planet would this be considered a good idea?” someone will post a reply saying, “Well, when I used Dijon mustard, red wine and celery, I did it like this.” So, in the spirit of keeping an open mind, let’s look at some ingredients you may not have considered and the ways they can be used in your beer.
Get Your Produce On
Fruits and vegetables exist primarily for one purpose: to ensure the spreading of a plant’s genetic material (seeds). Lucky for us, they do so in packages that exhibit diverse flavors and aromas. The trick is how to get the flavors and aromas into your beer.
Needless to say, you should start with the best sources of produce. Hit the farmers market late in the day to strike a deal and choose produce not for looks, but for flavor. If the brew day is imminent, look for fruit so ripe it’s about to turn south. Don’t have a farmers market handy? Don’t fret. Despite the fresh is best mantra of the culinary media, individually quick frozen (IQF) techniques have ratcheted up the quality of frozen fruits
and vegetables in the past decade. When a particular fruit or vegetable is out of season, frozen is not only easier, it’s also cheaper and tastes better than those god awful specimens that fly thousands of miles and are picked by dint of being able to survive the trip. Before we get into the how much question, let’s tackle how to
use produce:
1. You must wash your produce. Some fruits and vegetables, like apples and cucumbers, come coated in a food-grade wax that serves both as a protectant and beautifier. The rule of thumb is if it’s pretty and glossy, it’s coated. Simply wash with cold water and use a clean produce brush on your shellacked produce.
2. If the produce is large, or if the flesh isn’t exposed, it’s time to chop. Use a clean knife and cutting board and tackle the fruit or veg. Don’t worry about cutting a perfect brunoise — give everything a good chop to get it into 1⁄2 to 1-inch pieces.
3. Unless you’re dealing with fresh, leafy items, give everything a freeze. The average home freezer is horribly inefficient and we’re going to take advantage of that. When water in the produce is frozen slowly, it has time to form large crystals. These crystals pierce the cell walls of your produce. When you thaw and the crystals disappear, the juices and other interior goo will rush out of the mangled cells, giving you better flavor extraction. Vacuum packing will help encourage full goo-ification of your source matter. Alternatively, if you have a home juice machine that works by pulverizing the produce, you can create your own fruit and vegetable juice for use. Just make sure the machine is cleaned and sanitized before using (or freeze the juice before adding it).
Note: If you feel the need to sanitize the fruit before adding it, avoid heating it. That can set the pectin in the fruit and make it a gooey mess in your beer. Instead, soak the fruit in vodka to sanitize it. Or give the fruit a light spray of a sanitizer like Star San if you must. However, the two of us usually depend on the alcohol content and lowered pH of the fermented beer to keep things safe.
4. That’s it for the prep work for almost all fruits and non-starchy vegetables. We’ll cover the exceptions in a moment, but let’s finish this happy path with a trip to the fermenter. Although you may not normally use a secondary fermenter, this is one time that a secondary can be valuable. Adding fruit will often trigger a true secondary fermentation. Using another primary fermenter for your secondary is not a bad idea. Be sure that whatever venting mechanism you’re using — airlock, blowoff tube, etc — won’t clog. If your excitable ferment throws raspberry flesh into the airlock port, it could jam the airlock, creating a truly explosive situation. You do not want to come home to a wall full of glass shards or a ceiling full of Raspberry Imperial Stout! Note: Some folks like to use big mesh bags to hold their additions to retain clarity. However, we generally prefer to add the produce directly. If you want clear beer, then you’ll need to be vigilant and patient enough to allow the beer to settle or be annoyed enough to filter. Truth be told, mesh bags won’t spare you this pain either.
Other Produce Process
Citrus zest is a great way to add citrus fruit flavor. In fact, almost the entire orange flavor that we picture when
we think of a fresh orange is locked in essential oils like limonene in the outer peel.
Use a fruit zester or microplane grater to create citrus zest. Start with the zest of two fruits before adjusting up or down. It can either go in during the last 2–3 minutes of the boil or be added to the fermenter after fermentation has died down.
Remember that the zest is the outermost part of the fruit rind, where the oils are concentrated, and not the white, bitter pith. However, you can take a cue from brewers like Mark Jilg of Craftsman Brewing, who uses the whole orange — including the pith — to provide an extra bitterness to his fruity and hoppy Orange Grove
Pale Ale.
Dried fruits and vegetables can be another great way to skip the annoyance of fresh produce, and they don’t add any moisture to the brew! Using them is as simple as opening a bag and dumping them into the beer. You’re effectively using the beer to rehydrate them and create an alcoholic tincture.
Be careful when buying dried fruit; make sure to grab unsulfured varieties. You don’t want to add sulfur compounds to your beer, do you? From a visual perspective, the unsulfured version isn’t as bright and fresh-looking, but fortunately you’ll be drinking it, not staring at it. With dried vegetables, make sure you’re buying dehydrated vegetables and not oil- and salt-coated roasted vegetables. That would be bad juju for your beer.
Roots like potatoes, carrots, beets, or parsnips should be cooked first and smashed to ensure complete access to their goodness. Mashing starchy vegetables helps you avoid flooding your beer with starches.
Produce Quantity
Now you get to see why we seemed so obsessive about cost. To get fruit flavor in a beer, you need a lot of it. For a 5-gallon (19-L) batch, we’re talking a minimum of 2.5 pounds (1.1 kg) of cranberries on the low side to nearly 20 pounds (9 kg) of apples on the high side. The general rule of thumb with fruit is to use 1 pound (0.45 kg) for each gallon (3.8 L) of beer, but for very subtly flavored fruits like blueberries or blackberries, you might want to increase that amount to 2 or 3 pounds (~1 to 1.3 L) per gallon (0.45 kg). If you’re wondering about the impact on your beer’s gravity, you have to remember that a good portion of fruit is water. The rough average of fruit juice gravity is in the 1.040–1.050 SG range. Vegetables are a little trickier to gauge. Many of them contain green flavors like chlorophyll (spinach) or sulfur compounds (garlic), which are less-than-desirable in a finished beer. Others, like chile peppers, will punish you horribly for overuse. Sometimes a single pepper (such as a ghost pepper) is enough to drive a full batch into hotter-than-hell territory.
Think about increasing the amount even more if you’re adding it to a strongly flavored beer like a stout or porter. One pound (0.45 kg) of blueberries per gallon (3.8 L) in a porter produces a very restrained blueberry flavor and virtually no aroma. To really make them stand out, using 2 pounds (1 kg) per gallon (3.8 L) of finished beer isn’t out of line.
Think of it as: “Would you like some beer with your raspberry?” Also, don’t forget: these fruits have endless subvarieties. Take a chance on a new variety you’ve never tried before, like the freaky Buddha’s hand citron or a candy cane beet. These are guidelines, after all, not Procrustean strictures.
Mean Green Beer
(5.5 gallons/21 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.057 FG = 1.015
IBU = 27 SRM = 3.8 ABV = 5.9%
Before we leave the world of vegetables, can we talk about the atrocity that’s foisted on the American public every March 17? We know it; you know it: it’s the scourge of green beer. If you’re lucky, it’s Harp with green dye injected into the keg. If you’re not, it’s some outstandingly bad American lager with the same green dye. Walk away from the green dye, people. Instead, take a chance and bulk up a golden ale with some body components like oats or wheat, and then hit it with fresh cucumber, spinach, and kale juice. Add some ginger to pull focus from the green, and voila, Irish eyes are smiling with a real Mean Green Beer.
Ingredients
11 lbs. (5 kg) 2-row pale malt
1.5 lbs. (0.68 kg) flaked oats
1.5 lbs. (0.68 kg) flaked wheat
7.5 AAU Warrior® pellet hops (60 min.)
(0.5 oz./14 g at 15% alpha acids)
1 oz. (28 g) Columbus pellet hops (0 min.)
1 bunch kale
2 bunches spinach
4 large English cucumbers
1 knuckle sized piece ginger, peeled
Wyeast 1272 (American Ale II) or White Labs WLP051 (California Ale V)
2⁄3 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
This is a single infusion mash. Mash in and hold at 155 °F (68 °C) for 60 minutes. Boil the wort for 60 minutes adding the first hop addition as the wort comes to a boil and the second hop addition at the very end of the boil. Chill to fermentation temperature of about 68 °F (20 °C) and aerate the wort. Pitch an appropriate amount of yeast. Ferment until no sign of fermentation is visible and let condition for about one week. On the day of packaging, take the kale, spinach, cucumbers and ginger and juice them. Add the juice to the keg or bottling bucket and rack in on top of it. Carbonate to 2.5 volumes and enjoy!
Mean Green Beer
(5.5 gallons/21 L, partial mash)
OG = 1.057 FG = 1.015
IBU = 27 SRM = 3.8 ABV = 5.9%
Ingredients
3.9 lbs. (1.8 kg) extra light dried malt extract
3 lbs. (1.36 kg) 2-row pale malt
1.5 lbs. (0.68 kg) flaked oats
1.5 lbs. (0.68 kg) flaked wheat
7.5 AAU Warrior® pellet hops
(60 min.) (0.5 oz./14 g at 15% alpha acids)
1 oz. (28 g) Columbus pellet hops (0 min.)
1 bunch kale
2 bunches spinach
4 large English cucumbers
1 knuckle sized piece ginger, peeled
Wyeast 1272 (American Ale II) or White Labs WLP051 (California Ale V)
2⁄3 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Crush the malt and add it with the flaked oats and flaked wheat to 11 qts. (10 L) water at 155 °F (68 °C). Hold the mash at this temperature for 60 minutes. Heat about 2 gallons (8 L) of water to 170 °F (77 °C) and wash the grains with the hot water when the 60 minutes is up. Add the dried malt extract and top off to 6.5 gallons (25 L). Boil the wort for 60 minutes adding the first hop addition as the wort comes to a boil and the second hop addition at the very end of the boil. Chill to fermentation temperature of about 68 °F (20 °C) and aerate the wort. Pitch an appropriate amount of yeast. Ferment until no sign of fermentation is visible and let condition for about one week. On the day of packaging, take the kale, spinach, cucumbers and ginger and juice them. Add the juice to the keg or bottling bucket and rack in on top of it. Carbonate to 2.5 volumes and enjoy!
Brewing With Meat
We racked our brains to come up with a joke to start this section. We thought about meat puns, meat double entendres, and meat stories. Then we realized that the joke is brewing with meat!
For years Denny has run an Iron Chef-type brewing competition for his homebrew club. Teams of brewers show up with equipment and basic ingredients for brewing and are given a secret ingredient to incorporate into their beers (the secret ingredient is often not something they’d normally use in a beer). He had joked for several years about giving the brewers pork chops as a secret ingredient. It was strange enough to amuse people, and it was obvious that no one would ever brew with pork chops. Right?
One club member, Jeremiah Marsden, took the joke seriously and made a batch of beer he called “Pork Soda.” Jeremiah is apparently an otherwise sane person, but you can see his recipe and comments here:
Pork Soda
(5.5 gallons/21 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.055 FG = 1.008
IBU = 27 SRM = 20 ABV = 6.3%
I wanted the essence of pork chop to come through — savory, herbal, and smoky. So I chose what is basically a brown ale with fairly low IBU as a base. The pork chops were seasoned with black pepper, sage, and rosemary and then grilled. They were added only to the mash. The grain bill included smoked malt to enhance the smoky grilled flavor, some darker crystal, and pale chocolate. Black pepper, seeds of paradise, and sage were added at the end of the boil, and then a sage-vodka tincture was added in the secondary. It was a nice savory beer; the sage came through very well, as did the light smoke. Make sure to mash high to enhance the malt, since the smoke and herbs dry it out a bit.
Ingredients
8.25 lbs. (3.74 kg) 2-row pale malt
1.65 lbs. (0.75 kg) Briess cherrywood smoked malt
1.1 lbs. (0.5 kg) crystal malt (40 °L)
4 oz. (113 g) crystal malt (120 °L)
4 oz. (113 g) chocolate malt (350 °L)
4 oz. (113 g) pale chocolate malt (170 °L)
4 oz. (113 g) Briess special roast malt (50 °L)
6.4 AAU Tettnang pellet hops
(60 mins.) (2.2 oz./62 g at 2.9% alpha acids)
1.7 AAU Saaz pellet hops (30 mins.)
(0.75 oz./21 g at 2.2% alpha acids)
1.7 AAU Saaz pellet hops (2 mins.)
(0.75 oz./21 g at 2.2% alpha acids)
1 lb. (0.45 kg) pork chops
2 oz. (57 g) grains of paradise (5 mins.)
1 oz. (28 g) ground sage (5 mins.)
0.5 tsp. black peppercorn (5 mins.)
2 oz. (57 g) ground sage (secondary)
Wyeast 1450 (Denny’s Favorite 50) yeast (2 qt./2 L starter)
2⁄3 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
This is a single infusion mash. Heat strike water to achieve a saccharification rest at 154 °F (68 °F). Add
the grilled pork chops to the mash and hold for 60 minutes. Total boil time is 60 minutes adding your first hop addition as the wort comes to a boil and the second hop addition with 30 minutes left in the boil. With 5 minutes lift in the boil, add the grains of paradise, black peppercorn and first addition of sage.
Chill the wort to 62–65 °F (17–18 °C). Pitch decanted yeast starter. Aerate well with the method of your choice. Ferment at 62–65 °F (17–18 °C) for approximately 1–2 weeks. Soak the 2 oz. (57 g) ground sage in enough vodka so that the sage is submerged to make a tincture. Let tincture sit for 1–2 weeks.
Transfer the beer to a sanitized secondary fermenter and add sage tincture. Let the beer sit for 5 days, then bottle or keg. Use priming sugar or force-carbonate the beer to about 2.5 volumes of CO2.
Pork Soda
(5.5 gallons/21 L, partial mash)
OG = 1.055 FG = 1.008
IBU = 27 SRM = 20 ABV = 6.3%
Ingredients
4.25 lbs. (1.93 kg) extra light dried malt extract
1 lb. (0.45 kg) 2-row pale malt
1.65 lbs. (0.75 kg) Briess cherrywood smoked malt
1.1 lbs. (0.5 kg) crystal malt (40 °L)
4 oz. (113 g) crystal malt (120 °L)
4 oz. (113 g) chocolate malt (350 °L)
4 oz. (113 g) pale chocolate malt (170 °L)
4 oz. (113 g) Briess special roast malt (50 °L)
6.4 AAU Tettnang pellet hops
(60 mins.) (2.2 oz./62 g at 2.9% alpha acids)
1.7 AAU Saaz pellet hops (30 mins.)
(0.75 oz./21 g at 2.2% alpha acids)
1.7 AAU Saaz pellet hops (2 mins.)
(0.75 oz./21 g at 2.2% alpha acids)
1 lb. (0.45 kg) pork chops
2 oz. (57 g) grains of paradise (5 mins.)
1 oz. (28 g) ground sage (5 mins.)
0.5 tsp. black peppercorn (5 mins.)
2 oz. (57 g) ground sage (secondary)
Wyeast 1450 (Denny’s Favorite 50) yeast (2 qt./2 L starter)
2⁄3 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Crush the malt and add it to 8 qts. (7 L) of water at 154 °F (68 °C) and grilled pork chops. Hold the mash at this temperature for 60 minutes. Heat about 6 qts. (6 L) of water to 170 °F (77 °C) and wash the grains with the hot water when the 60 minutes is up. Add the dried malt extract and top off to 6.5 gallons (25 L). Total boil time is 60 minutes adding your first hop addition as the wort comes to a boil and the second hop addition with 30 minutes left in the boil. With 5 minutes left in the boil, add the grains of paradise, black peppercorn and first addition of sage.
Chill the wort to 62–65 °F (17–18 °C). Pitch decanted yeast starter. Aerate well with the method of your choice. Ferment at 62–65 °F (17–18 °C) for approximately 1–2 weeks. Soak the 2 oz. (57 g) ground sage in enough vodka so that the sage is submerged to make a tincture. Let tincture sit for 1–2 weeks. Transfer the beer to a sanitized secondary fermenter and add sage tincture. Let the beer sit for 5 days, then bottle or keg. Use priming sugar or force-carbonate to about 2.5 volumes of CO2.
Bacon Helles
(5.5 gallons/21 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.050 FG = 1.012
IBU = 18 SRM = 4 ABV = 5.0%
Sage of the ages, Homer Simpson, when told that ham, pork chops, and bacon all come from the same animal expressed disbelief that such a magical animal could exist. Out of the three, bacon seems to be everyone’s favorite ingredient, and that means you have to find a way to get it into a beer. Charlie Essers, aka Push Eject of the Brewing Network, found a clever way of safely adding bacon to his Helles recipe. The bacon itself was baked to ensure even cooking with no charring. (Since the Helles is a delicate beer, any char would translate into an unpleasant, in-your-face burned aroma.) The bacon wasn’t added directly to the beer either; it was crumbled and soaked in vodka for a few days first to dissolve the bacony essence. The resulting tincture was then added to a half portion of the helles to allow Charlie to serve both the regular Helles and Schweinchen Helles at the same time.
Ingredients
10 lbs. (4.54 kg) Weyermann Pilsner malt
12 oz. (0.34 kg) Munich malt
4 oz. (113 g) melanoidin malt
4.2 AAU Magnum pellet hops
(60 mins.) (0.3 oz./9 g at 14% alpha acids)
2 strips of bacon, thick cut (read on)
White Labs WLP820 (Oktoberfest/Märzen Lager) yeast (2 qt./2 L starter)
2⁄3 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
This is a single infusion mash. Heat strike water to achieve a saccharification rest at 151 °F (66 °C) for 60 minutes. Total boil time is 60 minutes adding your first hop addition as the wort comes to a boil. After 60 minutes, turn off the heat and chill the beer to about 50 °F (10 °C). Pitch a large 1⁄2 gallon (2 L) or larger starter. Allow the beer to ferment in primary for 2 weeks at 48-50 °F (9–10 °C). Raise the fermentation temperature to 65 °F (18 °C) for 2 days and then slowly lower to 35 °F (2 °C) for 4 weeks. Create the bacon tincture by cooking the bacon on a rack in the oven at 320 °F (160 °C) for 40–50 minutes or until perfectly crispy (but not burnt!). Pat off the grease and allow it to cool. Crumble the bacon and cover with the vodka. Shake every day until packaging the beer. On packaging day, filter the bacon tincture through a sieve and coffee filter and add to the keg or bottling bucket. Proceed as normal.
Bacon Helles
(5.5 gallons/21 L, extract with grains)
OG = 1.050 FG = 1.012
IBU = 18 SRM = 4 ABV = 5.0%
Ingredients
5.6 lbs. (2.54 kg) Pilsen dried malt extract
12 oz. (0.34 kg) Munich malt
4.0 oz. (113 g) melanoidin malt
4.2 AAU Magnum pellet hops
(0.3 oz./9 g at 14% alpha acids) (60 mins.)
2 strips of bacon, thick cut (read on)
White Labs WLP820 (Oktoberfest/Märzen Lager) yeast (2 qt./2 L starter)
2⁄3 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Crush the malt and add it to 4 qts. (4 L) at 151 °F (66 °C). Hold the grains at this temperature for 30 minutes. Heat about 4 qts. (4 L) of water to 170 °F (77 °C) and wash the grains with the hot water when the 30 minutes are up. Add the dried malt extract and top off to 6.5 gallons (25 L). Boil the beer for 60 minutes adding the hops at the beginning of the boil. Chill the beer to about 50 °F (10 °C). Pitch a large 1⁄2 gallon (2 L) or larger starter. Allow the beer to ferment in primary for 2 weeks at 48–50 °F (9–10 °C). Raise the fermentation temperature to 65 °F (18 °C) for 2 days and then slowly lower to 35 °F (2 °C) for 4 weeks. Create the bacon tincture by cooking the bacon on a rack in the oven at 320 °F (160 °C) for 40–50 minutes or until perfectly crispy (but not burnt!). Pat off the grease and a-llow it to cool. Crumble the ba-con and cover with the vodka. Shake every day until packaging the beer. On packaging day, filter the bacon tincture through a sieve and coffee filter and add to the keg or bottling bucket. Proceed as normal.
Meat In History
Now before you run away, thinking we’re being silly for the sake of being silly, meat in fermented beverages has great historical precedence. If you search online, you’ll find recipes for Cock Ale, which was made in Britain around the 1600s and 1700s. The recipe calls for ale to be boiled with an old rooster, fruits like dates and raisins, sack (Sherry), and spices like nutmeg and clove. It was considered a fine drink with medicinal qualities. Also, some cider makers used to throw raw pork sides into their ciders when the ferment had gone wrong. Turns out that what these brewers had stumbled on before they understood it was the power of protein and the clarifying impact of collagen and gelatin.
The introduction of the meat also added valuable amino acids that allowed the yeast to rise up and do their thing more effectively. (Remember, this is one hundred to two hundred years before yeast was even recognized as a key cause of beer.) These guys weren’t carefully growing up pure cultured yeast starters with ideal cell counts, high viability, proper nutrition, and so on. They were either using the stuff from the air or stuff that lived in the vats or from previously fermenting beer. All of it was less than healthy and needed all the help it could get. Yeast exposed to meat fermented more strongly, producing a drier, clearer ale that would be rated as fine.
As for recreating this fine ale today, you’ll have a big problem. Commercial birds aren’t allowed to get old. The average age of a factory raised bird is about 6 to 7 weeks. Compared to a hen or rooster of the Cock Ale period, that’s insanely young. A rooster destined for the pot would be a few years old. And that age is important! As the bird ages, the meat becomes tougher and laden with connective tissue — the home of collagen. It’s this collagen and the gelatin from the bones that aids in the clarification of the beer. If you can find a stewing hen, you’ll be much closer but still a little off. Stewing hen breeds are usually birds raised for egg laying, but when their productivity dips (after about 20 months), they consume more feed than their egg output warrants, and off they go, ready for the pot.
Digby’s Cock-Ale, Modernized
(5.5 gallons/21 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.080 FG = 1.018
IBU = 42 SRM = 12 ABV = 8.3%
Sir Kenhelm Digby may have invented the modern wine bottle and been a strange enchanting figure of the English religious civil wars, but he didn’t have the knowledge to fear raw chicken like we do — so in his honor we present this beer.
Ingredients
14 lbs. (6.35 kg) Maris Otter pale ale malt
1 lb. (0.45 kg) Crisp brown malt
1 lb. (0.45 kg) Weyermann rauch malt
11 AAU Target pellet hops (60 mins.)
(1 oz./28 g at 11% alpha acids)
5 lbs. (2.3 kg) bone-in chicken parts
2.5 lbs. (1.13 kg) raisins
6 oz. (170 g) dates
1⁄4 nutmeg seed, grated
1 mace blade
1.5 L sweet Sherry
Wyeast 1275 (Thames Valley Ale) or White Labs WLP023 (Burton Ale) yeast
2⁄3 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
This is a single infusion mash. Heat strike water to achieve a saccharification rest at 156 °F (69 °F) for 60 minutes. Total boil time is 60 minutes adding your hops as the wort comes to a boil. Chill the wort to fermentation temperature of about 68 °F (20 °C) and aerate. Pitch an appropriate amount of yeast. After primary fermentation, take the chicken and bring to a gentle boil for 2 hours to make a broth and make everything, including the bones, soft. Smash the chicken bones with a cleaver and throw the chicken into a food processor along with the raisins, dates, spice, and about 6 oz. (180 mL) Sherry. Do this in batches according to food processor size. Create a rough mince by pulsing the mix several times. Make it resemble a sticky ground beef. Add the mix and the rest of the wine to a bucket and rack the beer onto the mix. Age for a week before racking off and packaging.
Digby’s Cock-Ale, Modernized
(5.5 gallons/21 L, partial mash)
OG = 1.080 FG = 1.018
IBU = 42 SRM = 12 ABV = 8.3%
Ingredients
9.9 lbs. (4.5 kg) Maris Otter liquid malt extract
1 lb. (0.45 kg) Maris Otter pale ale malt
1 lb. (0.45 kg) Crisp brown malt
1 lb. (0.45 kg) Weyermann rauch malt
11 AAU Target pellet hops (60 mins.)
(1 oz./28 g at 11% alpha acids)
5 lbs. (2.3 kg) bone-in chicken parts
2.5 lbs. (1.13 kg) raisins
6 oz. (170 g) dates
1⁄4 nutmeg seed, grated
1 mace blade
1.5 L sweet Sherry
Wyeast 1275 (Thames Valley Ale) or White Labs WLP023 (Burton Ale) yeast
2⁄3 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Crush the malt and add it to 6 qts. (6 L) at 156 °F (69 °C). Hold the mash at this temperature for 60 minutes. Heat about 6 qts. (6 L) of water to 170 °F (77 °C) and wash the grains with the hot water when the 60 minutes is up. Add the liquid malt extract and top off to 6.5 gallons (25 L). Total boil time is 60 minutes adding your hops as the wort comes to a boil. Chill the wort to fermentation temperature of about 68 °F (20 °C) and aerate. Pitch an appropriate amount of yeast. After primary fermentation, take the chicken and bring to a gentle boil for 2 hours to make a broth and make everything, including the bones, soft. Smash the chicken bones with a cleaver and throw the chicken into a food processor along with the raisins, dates, spice, and about 6 oz. (180 mL) of Sherry. Do this in batches according to food processor size. Create a rough mince by pulsing the mix several times. Make it resemble a sticky ground beef. Add the mix and the rest of the wine to a bucket and rack the beer onto the mix. Let age for a week before racking off and packaging as usual.
Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from Experimental Homebrewing (Voyageur Press, 2014). The recipes that appear in this excerpt have been formatted from their original appearance to reflect Brew Your Own’s recipe standardization.
