Hot! Hot! Hot! Brewing with Chili Peppers
At the back of every homebrew supply store, there is a secret door. It’s covered with posters from malt and hop suppliers, labels from local brewpubs and microbreweries, price lists and other paperwork. You’d never even notice the door, if I hadn’t told you about it.
The shop employees and management don’t want the average customer to know about the door. It’s reserved for “special” clientele, those in the know. You have to have a password to be admitted to the inner sanctum. I am about to reveal that password. Be careful, though. Don’t use it unless you are the only customer in the shop, and only if you are a good, loyal, customer. Even then, count on getting a nervous laugh, followed by an apprehensive glance around the shop to make sure no one is listening. Finally, the owner may say something like, “Why don’t you come back here out of the public eye, and I’ll see what I can find for you …”
The secret password? “Do you have a recipe for chili beer?” Most homebrewers, at one time or another, get this urge to try a chili beer. It’s kind of a deep dark secret of our brother-and-sisterhood, one few of us will admit to the non-brewing population. These beers are the stuff of legend. Recipes and descriptions are passed down secretively from brewer to brewer. The experts at your local brewshop probably have their own favorite formula, but aren’t likely to give it to just anybody.
What is it about chili beers that causes us to behave this way? The thought of combining sweet and bitter beer with hot and spicy peppers is, in a way, a perverse desire. On the other hand, the execution of this desire is a sure test of a brewer’s skills. It’s very easy to make a bad chili beer, and very tricky to get it right. Maybe it’s the challenge that pushes us to delve into this alchemistic realm. Whatever it is, it’s best we keep the experiment to ourselves until we get it right.
What do chili beers taste like? What do they look like? What are the do’s and don’ts a first-time chili-beer brewer should heed? Well, come back here, out of the light, and I’ll share my secrets. But don’t tell anyone else.
First and foremost, a chili beer must be a beer. The chili is secondary. The beer itself must be sound, solid, balanced and worth brewing. Second, even if you love hot food, a chili beer will be hotter than you think, and too hot for most people, so don’t plan on taking it to a neighborhood potluck dinner. Third, ask yourself the very serious question, “Do I really want to do this?” If you answer yes, go ahead. Fourth and final recommendation: wash your hands with soap (water alone doesn’t work), before, but especially after handling the peppers!
Capsicum, the stuff in chilis that causes heat, can burn you big-time-your hands, eyes, nose. Some peppers are dangerous enough to warrant wearing disposable rubber gloves. Trust me, I’ve been there.
A word about peppers: The best peppers to use are little ones-several varieties can be found that are an inch to two inches long, and these fit neatly into beer bottles. Green, fresh peppers are not quite as intensely hot (usually) as dried red ones, and may have more sweetness to balance the heat. If you are not putting them into the bottles, you can use bigger ones in the boil or in the fermenter, which may be more economical. Part of it is presentation- a pepper in the bottle works like a worm in a bottle of mescal – a clear warning! The absence of a pepper may allow your beer to sneak up on the drinker.
Each of these recipes calls for adding a pepper to the bottle, but that is only one way to get chili in your beer. I like to think chilis react like hops: They contribute different degrees of flavor and aroma, depending on when and how they are added to the batch.
Add the chilis to the bottle if you want the drinker to know it’s there, and if you want the chili flavor to increase as the beer ages. The alcohol in the beer will leach out the hot and the fruity-spicy pepper flavor over time, and it won’t get overly harsh. This will also give you a fair amount of hot peppery aroma. The ultimate in “dry-hopping”!
Alternatively, you could add the chilis to the wort during the last 5 minutes of the boil and continue to steep them in the wort for 15 minutes after shutting off the heat. This method will get the spicy flavor into the beer, like a late-boil flavor hop addition. Little aroma will remain, but this will contribute a solid, clean hot flavor if it’s done with finesse.
A third possibility is to put the chilis into the primary fermenter as you pitch the yeast and leave them there until you rack to secondary. This will give you good heat, good pepper-as-fruit flavor, and enough chili aroma to balance the beer aromas. This is the method that adds the most to the beer’s complexity. A fourth possibility is to add the chilis to the mash.
The pluses and minuses of these methods are worth considering: A bottle of beer with a chili in it is a statement, a challenge. A drawback, one best solved by using the second method above, is the sanitation question. Do you know where your chilis have been? Putting them into finished, fermented beer is probably safe, as the alcohol will likely kill off anything nasty. But 5 minutes of boiling and 15 minutes of steeping will do even better.
Golden Chili Lager
(5 gallons, partial mash)
This recipe is reminiscent of Cave Creek Chili Beer, brewed by Crazy Ed’s Black Mountain Brewing in Cave Creek, Arizona. It looks harmless enough (unless there’s a chili lurking in the bottle!) but if you’re not careful, that hot stuff will reach right out of the glass and tear your throat open!
Ingredients:
- 1.5 lbs. pilsner malt
- 1 lb. carapils malt
- 4 lbs. unhopped extra light dry malt extract (DME)
- 1 oz. of 4% alpha-acid Hallertau hops (4 AAUs)
- 1 oz. of 4% alpha-acid Mt. Hood hops (4 AAUs)
- American lager yeast slurry (Wyeast 2035 or equivalent)
- 7/8 cup corn sugar for priming
- 48-52 jalapeño peppers
Step by Step:
Heat 5 quarts water to 163°F. Crush grains, mix into liquor and hold at 152°F for 75 minutes. Runoff and sparge with 8 quarts water at 168°F. Add DME, heat to boiling.
Total boil is 60 minutes. Add Hallertau hops, boil 45 minutes. Add Mt. Hood hops, boil 15 minutes, remove from heat. Cool, pour into fermenter with enough preboiled, chilled water to make 5.25 gallons. At 65°F or cooler, pitch lager yeast.
Ferment cool (60°F) for two days, then move to a cooler place (50°F) and ferment two weeks. Rack to secondary and lager three to four weeks at 40°F. Prime with corn sugar, add 1 pepper to each bottle, cap. Age cool (45 to 50°F) for three to four weeks.
OG = 1.048 (12° Plato)
FG = 1.010 (2.5° Plato)
Bitterness = 20 IBUs
Chili Stout
(5 gallons, partial mash)
Perfect for celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day in Tijuana, this dry, black stout will drive the snakes out of any place you want. Roasted barley goes well with hot peppers, if only you let it.
Ingredients:
- 1 lb. pale malt
- 0.5 lb. dark crystal malt (90°Lovibond)
- 0.5 lb. roasted barley
- 1/4 lb. black patent malt
- 4 lbs. unhopped dark dry malt extract (DME)
- 0.75 oz. of 9% alpha-acid Northern Brewer hops (7 AAUs)
- Irish Ale yeast slurry (Wyeast 1084 or equivalent)
- 1/4 cup brown sugar for priming
- 1/2 cup amber DME for priming
- 8-10 habañero (“Scotch bonnet”) peppers, cut into 50 strips.
Step by Step:
Heat 6 quarts water to 163°F. Crush grains and mix into liquor. Hold at 152° F for 75 minutes. Runoff and sparge with 9 quarts at 168°F. Add DME, bring to a boil.
Add hops, boil 60 minutes. Cool, add to fermenter along with enough chilled preboiled water to make up 5.25 gallons. At 68°F or so, pitch yeast. Ferment at 65-68°F for two weeks, then rack to secondary. Condition at 60°F for three weeks.
Prime with DME and brown sugar. Bottle, placing a piece of habañero in each bottle, and seal. (Warning: wear gloves when you’re working with habañeros, and keep your hands away from your face!) Condition at 55° F for three weeks.
OG = 1.048 (12° Plato)
FG = 1.012 (3° Plato)
Bitterness = 30 IBUs
Smoked Chili IPA
(5 gallons, partial mash)
For the beer drinker who has tried everything before, just to prove that he or she hasn’t. This beer is malty and fairly big underneath and hoppy in the middle, with a waft of beechwood smoke near the end. And, of course, you get dragon’s breath for hours after!
Ingredients:
- 3 lbs. pale malt
- 1 lb. toasted pale malt (toast in oven for 30 minutes at 350°F)
- 1 lb. beechwood smoked rauchmalt
- 1 lb. medium crystal malt (50° to 60° Lovibond)
- 4 lbs. unhopped light dry malt extract (DME)
- 2/3 oz. of 12% alpha-acid Chinook hops (8 AAUs)
- 3/4 oz. of 8% alpha-acid Perle hops (6 AAUs)
- 1 oz. of 4% alpha-acid Kent Goldings hops (4 AAUs)
- 1 oz. of 4% alpha-acid Fuggles hops (4 AAUs)
- 1 large dried Anaheim chili o English ale yeast slurry (Wyeast 1098 or equivalent)
- 1 lb. oak chips (optional)
- 1 cup light DME for priming
- 25 medium dried Anaheim chilis, cut in half
Step by Step
Heat 10 quarts water to 164°F. Crush grains, mix into liquor and hold at 152°F for 90 minutes. Runoff and sparge with 15 quarts water at 169°F. Add DME to kettle, bring to a boil.
Total boil is 90 minutes. Add Chinook hops, boil 30 minutes. Add Perle hops, boil 30 minutes. Add Kent Goldings hops, boil 30 minutes. Turn off heat, add Fuggles hops and 1 dried Anaheim, chopped into small pieces.
Steep 30 minutes. Remove hops and pepper, chill wort. Steam (15 minutes) and toast (350°F, 30 minutes) oak chips, if desired, and place in fermenter. Add wort to fermenter along with enough preboiled and chilled water to make up 5.25 gallons. At 65° to 68°F, pitch yeast.
Ferment relatively warm (68-70°F) for two weeks. Rack to secondary and condition cool (55-60°F) for three to four weeks. Prime with DME, add half an Anaheim pepper to each bottle. Seal and condition for six weeks.
OG = 1.070 (17.5° Plato)
FG = 1.020 (5° Plato)
Bitterness = 55 IBUs
