Falvours Other Than Hops

[hihosland]

Christmas greetings brewing folk,
Hops add bitterness and flavour,
Bitterness essentially free of flavour can be added with iso hop extract,
What other products can be used to add flavour to beer?
I have tried grated orange peel orange but since I could discern no
difference I presumably did not add enough.
many thanks to brewers thoughts
Davidh

 

[lonte]

I'm not sure there's anything not been tried in flavouring a beer! I'm working on a Lemon Grass Lager recipe at the moment. Fruits and spices are common, coffee too. Timing can be a critical thing - it is possible to lose all or most of a flavour/aroma by putting stuff in too long in the boil and through CO2 "scrubbing" at the beginning of a ferment. So, especially for volatiles, in the secondary ferment can give better results.

 

[shazzam]

Playing with Honey, Golden Syrup, Treacle, Molasses and Maple Syrup
this should be interesting - dedicated to pure malt brewing - it is very hard to get away from !

I'm not sure there's anything not been tried in flavouring a beer! I'm working on a Lemon Grass Lager recipe at the moment. Fruits and spices are common, coffee too. Timing can be a critical thing - it is possible to lose all or most of a flavour/aroma by putting stuff in too long in the boil and through CO2 "scrubbing" at the beginning of a ferment. So, especially for volatiles, in the secondary ferment can give better results.

 

[Steve]

hoho

honey, chocolate, coriander, chilli.....you can basically add anything you want. Have a look in the recipe section. Or do a search and type in the word you are interested. It'll probably be in here.

Cheers
Steve

 

[tangent]

Lemon Grass Lager

Hey, great to see! I made one in my K&K days. I've been meaning to do an AG version.
It's easy to use because you can just make a strong lemongrass tea first and let it cool enough to have a taste, then you know how much to add. The more stem you use, the less you need.

 

[Weizguy]

Bog myrtle is an old additive. You may do well to research Gruit or Gruitbeer.

Arsenic, tobacco, liquorice, all types of fruit can be added (historically).
Coca-Cola has been/can be used in beer (see the insane fizzy cordial beer thread).
Dried fruit and spices can be added to make a Christmas "pudding" flavour in the beer.
Liquid smoke, anyone?

Other flavours come from the yeast. Some nice esters (banana, vanilla, bubblegum, cloves) are produced by weizen yeast from the wheat malt, with no other additions.
Similarly with Saison, use the right yeast to produce a complex fruity array of tastes.

Flavours can be introduced from many sources. Try 'em all!

festive Seth

 

[hihosland]

Wow what a feast of replies ! ! !
in such a short time.
Thank you all.
A quick explaination of the
reasons behind my original post
.
I've been down the AG route and loved the process and the product.
Then moved I away from my brewing mate, and from the space the time and the gear that our AG consumed.
Target was to reduce brewing to the absolute minimum that would produce a reasonable product, concentrating only on those variables that made a real diffrence.
Many here will disagree with my defination of real.
but my list of essentials that made a difference is
ingredients
sanitation
temperature
=======
LME, low temp yeast, malto dextrin and iso hops fermented and largered at 10C gave me an acceptible, repeatible, drinkable brew. But a brew lacking in character.
My request for flavours was seeking a quick and easy method to spice up a pleasant but boring brew without going to the fuss of all grain.
best Christmas wishes
Davidh
=========

 

[Asher]

A couple of great ingredients to steep in your KK boiling water are Green Tea for a light coloured lagers or ales, or Juniper berries in a strong golden type ale...

Asher for now

 

[sqyre]

Howdy, stumbled across an interesting additive..

I made up a huge batch of an "american brown ale" (for lack of a better description)

well the first batch i made was lovely so i thought i'd make another batch..

Being a K&K guy if i like something i usually make a huge batch about 140litres worth and live off it for a couple of months..well did that and it...well.. it didn't turn out quite as well as last time..2nd big batch and well...nasty...not so much a bad flavor but a very ordinary after taste..

Well when you make that much you cant bare to see it go to waste so i soldiered on drinking it when the taste buds were numb... :unsure:

Anyway to make a short story long...while making up my daughters cordial in her sippy cup i thought stuff it and put a splash in with the "nasty" beer i was trying to get through..

Well all i can say is.... it aint bad... gave some to the missus and even she ended up having a few!!!

She reckons it tastes like creaming soda...



The cordial was Extra Juicy Apple Rasperry... (definatly No affiliation)



Just thought i'd pass this on as Mrs sqyre liked it so much i might make it a regular thing..

and it maybe a good get out of jail card for "ordinary beers"

 

[sluggerdog]

Howdy, stumbled across an interesting additive..

I made up a huge batch of an "american brown ale" (for lack of a better description)

well the first batch i made was lovely so i thought i'd make another batch..

Being a K&K guy if i like something i usually make a huge batch about 140litres worth and live off it for a couple of months..well did that and it...well.. it didn't turn out quite as well as last time..2nd big batch and well...nasty...not so much a bad flavor but a very ordinary after taste..

Well when you make that much you cant bare to see it go to waste so i soldiered on drinking it when the taste buds were numb... :unsure:

Anyway to make a short story long...while making up my daughters cordial in her sippy cup i thought stuff it and put a splash in with the "nasty" beer i was trying to get through..

Well all i can say is.... it aint bad... gave some to the missus and even she ended up having a few!!!

She reckons it tastes like creaming soda...



The cordial was Extra Juicy Apple Rasperry... (definatly No affiliation)



Just thought i'd pass this on as Mrs sqyre liked it so much i might make it a regular thing..

and it maybe a good get out of jail card for "ordinary beers"

sqyre, back when I was K&K I made some shockers, I used to turn theses into snakebites, 5050 of beer and cider with a splash of rasperry cordial. Fixed it right up.

Now if I make an poor lager I usually have a stout or porter on tap and just give it a few squirts and it seems to hide the stuff up..

:beer:

 

[colinw]

Small quantities of many cooking spices can work in a wit. Traditionally, many witbiers have a secret 'house' spice in addition to the normal coriander and curacao peel. This can be tiny amounts of things like ginger, black pepper, cardamom, and who knows what else.

Then there are the odd salted beers the eastern part of Germany - Gose.

For dark beers and stouts, you can achieve wonderfully rich and complex flavours with judicious use of additives like chocolate, coffee, vanilla, cherries. If you are mashing or partial mashing, a tiny amount of smoked malt, way below the amount which would make a rauchbier, can add intriguing complexity to dark beers without being obviously smoky.

Once you are mashing, another path to unusual flavours is inclusion of wierd starchy vegetables & grains in the mash, like the Far North Queenslanders who are experimenting with the seeds of native grasses, and the many gluten free grains now available. Things like potato, sweet potato & pumpkin can also be used, although generally with little impact of flavour. Basically, anything with convertable starches in it can go in the mash, and contribute fermentable sugars and its own unique flavour.

 

[Jaeger]

Once you are mashing, another path to unusual flavours is inclusion of wierd starchy vegetables & grains in the mash, like the Far North Queenslanders who are experimenting with the seeds of native grasses, and the many gluten free grains now available.

My brother made a Wit using triticale, a wheat-rye hybrid. From memory it tasted pretty good, but I suspect the recipe needs some work to get better conversion of the mash.
Triticale Wit

Re: Using lemongrass in beer, have you tried using Lemon Myrtle (Backhousia citriodora) instead? It has the highest concentrations of citral of any plant source, and it's highly regarded in cooking.
There's also an Aniseed Myrtle (Backhousia anisata) if you're into that kind on thing. You can buy dried lemon myrtle from specialty food stores - look for the "bush tucker" section.

I'm very fond of pepperberries (Tasmannia lanceolata), but I'm not sure how they'd go in beer - perhaps as flavouring in a Wit? The purple colouring from the pepperberries might be a bit strange... :unsure:

 

[Wortgames]

Don't forget cock