Beer Style: Specialty and Experimental Beer
Growing and Brewing With Mushrooms
There is no one-flavor-fits-all when it comes to mushrooms. A brewer shares his experience growing and brewing with shiitake mushrooms that contribute a sweet white chocolate flavor and aroma to a saison.
Lindgren Craft Brewery’s Narrow Gauge Shiitake Mushroom Saison clone
This beer features what you would expect in a saison in regards to the malt and hops balance and the fruity esters and phenols derived from the saison yeast. The shiitake mushrooms provide a notable sweet white chocolate flavor and aroma that pairs very well with the yeast to create a beer like no other.
Gruit
While it is true that it is an unhopped beer that uses other herbs to add character, traditional gruit is a very narrowly defined and specific beverage that was highly regulated by various governments in the Middle Ages in northwestern Europe. Learn more about this concoction of lore.
Infusing Chocolate and Coffee to Your Brew
Chocolate and coffee are two adjuncts that are stalwarts in the craft beer world. Denny and Drew have used them both extensively and are here to share their advice to making the best use of them.
Brewing Sugars for Modern Beers
Sugar, generally from malted barley, is necessary to feed the yeast that produce ethanol in beer. But sugar can also be an ingredient that doesn’t have to come from malt, and it’s not just used to create macro-style lagers. Let’s take a closer look at some of the more popular brewing sugars, the characteristics they impart on beer, styles they may best suit, and advice on how to best use them in your brewing.
Sly Fox Brewing Co.’s Morning Brew Coffee Blonde clone
The blonde ale itself was made with a simple malt bill and low bitterness — a little lower on the bitterness scale than normal since the coffee, even though it was cold-brewed, would still add some sharpness.
Sapwood Cellars’ Flaked clone
This is their Sapwood Cellars’ Flaked (2021) beer, which is described as an imperial oatmeal stout with coconut and vanilla, and weighs in at 10.5% ABV.
Chicha Beer
Chicha beer is a modern interpretation of the historical chicha drink from the Andean region of South America that respects tradition by using elements of the historical style with modern methods and ingredients. This reimagined style is open to interpretation, but is most often brewed with corn and other ingredients native to Latin America, has a slight sourness, skips the hops, and should be drank fresh. Learn more about this rustic style and how to brew your own chicha beer.
Pickle Beer
If you are on the hunt for a beer that is nice and refreshing on a hot day, here is a recipe for you!
Behemoth Brewing Co.’s Chocolate Fish Milk Stout clone
A flavorful beer led by chocolate with notes of raspberry supporting. The beer drinks like a chocolate raspberry dessert while retaining all the character and drinkability of a traditional milk stout.
Chocolate Clones
We’ve collected chocolate beer clone recipes from six of our favorite breweries. Together, they show just how different chocolate beer recipes can be.
Brewing Chocolate Beers
There are at least nine ingredients homebrewers can use to contribute chocolate character to beer and five different times to add them. When considering combinations, that leads to thousands of possibilities. Luckily for you, John Nanci has done the test brews (well, a lot of them, at least). He’s here to share the results with readers.
