Author: Martin Keen
While enjoying an evening at one of my local haunts, Dingo Dog Brewing, I tried their Colony Collapse Smoked Habanero Honey Pale Ale, my first experience with a pepper beer. I enjoyed the heat quite a bit and felt the fruity notes from the pepper worked well with the hops, but I wasn’t much a fan of the smokiness. As I’m sure other homebrewers can relate, this experience got my gears turning.
Every year, my wife requests that I brew a beer for her birthday, something more unique than the standard IPA or Pilsner. Given her joy of darker styles, that tends to be the route I take, for example, in 2021 I made her a Peanut Butter Porter and last year’s offering was a Cherry Chocolate Stout. This year, she specifically requested an Irish Stout that was creamy and left a noticeable touch of heat on the palate. This was all the inspiration I needed!
Understanding that habanero peppers pack a decent punch of heat while also possessing a pleasant fruity flavor, I quickly settled on it as my pepper of choice, and I had no plans to roast or smoke them prior to use. I’d read a bit about pepper tinctures and considered that option, but given the results of a past xBmt on the topic, I opted to add it directly to the beer instead.
| Making Emerald Blaze Habanero Stout |
For this batch, I went with a pretty basic Irish Stout recipe I’ve had success with in the past.
Emerald Blaze Habanero Stout
After adjusting the brewing water to my desired profile and getting it heating up, I weighed out and milled the grains.
With the water appropriately heated, I incorporated the grains then set the Clawhammer Supply controller to maintain my target mash temperature of 152°F/67°C. While the mash was resting, I weighed out the kettle hop additions.
When the 60 minute mash step was complete, I removed the grains, boiled the wort for 60 minutes, then quickly chilled the wort before taking a refractometer reading showing it was at my target of 1.043 OG. After racking the wort to my fermentation keg, I pitched a pouch of Imperial Yeast A10 Darkness.
With the beer at 1.011 FG after a week of fermenting at 68°F/20°C, I placed a single frozen habanero pepper in sanitizer before slicing it up.
I then gently added the sliced habanero flesh to a sanitized and CO2 purged keg.
At this point, I pressure-transferred the beer on top of the habanero and placed the filled keg in my keezer.
A week later, I burst carbonated the beer overnight then connected the keg to nitrogen for serving.
| IMPRESSIONS |
Known for being at the hotter end of the pepper scale, habaneros also have a notable fruity flavor to them that can pair well with beer. Making beers with hot peppers is nothing new, though in my experience, brewers tend to focus on either lighter pale lager or hoppy pale ale. It wasn’t until my wife requested a spicy Stout for her birthday that the idea of using habanero in a darker style occurred to me.
Based on my personal experience eating habaneros, I opted for to dose this 5 gallon/19 liter batch with just a single pepper, as my goal was to impart a noticeable yet tolerable amount of heat. While my wife and I did perceive a subtle warming when drinking Emerald Blaze, such was not the case for my heat-loving taster, Norm, who felt the beer was a solid yet pretty standard example of Irish Stout.
I should say that when I first sampled this beer on my wife’s birthday, the heat was a bit more noticeable than when I tasted it with Norm approximately 4 weeks later. We surmised that time had the effect of reducing the hot impact of the pepper. However, Norm bravely took a bite of a habanero from the same package and said that he did not perceive is as being excessively hot. Either way, I was quite please with the outcome of Emerald Blaze, though in the future, I’d be inclined to use 2 to 3 habaneros to accentuate both their heat and fruity contributions.
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If you have thoughts about this recipe or experience making something similar, please feel free to share in the comments section below!
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