Home Brew Forum

Hi!

Brew No. 6 - Cadbury's Real Ale Egg

Beer is my favourite type of liquid, and Cadbury's Creme Eggs are my favourite solid. It seemed more than natural to make an effort to combine the two, inspired by Charlie Brooker's funny chocolate rant.

The beer will be a dark, malty, chocolatey affair with a light smattering of First Gold hops which are said to have a light orange flavour. Hopefully these should complement the 180g of Cadbury's Creme Egg fondant centers that will be added to the end of the boil.



Goal (according to Beer Engine)
15L
EBC - 127
EBU - 37
OG - 1.050
FG - 1.011
ABV - 5.0%

Ingredients
2700g Pale Malt
210g Chocolate Malt
70g Torrefied Wheat
70g Dark Crystal Malt
180g Cadbury's Creme Egg fondant centers

20g First Gold (90 mins) (9.1%)
10g First Gold (15 mins)

28L East Riding of Yorkshire tap water, +1x campden tablet. pH = 7.4, TDS PPM = 345.

Label
NOTE: I've purposely blurred out the Cadbury's logo here so I don't get in trouble


Yeast harvesting
I want this to be a malty brew, so I decided to use the yeast from Fuller's 1845 - a particularly malty brew itself.




after 24 hrs:


after 2-3 days:


poured off the beer and washed the yeasties, ready to go!:


Marris Otter pale


the grist


The mash temperature log
Not as well controlled as previous brews (e.g. The Great GatsBeer)
Black line = mash temp
Blue line = oven temp


First runnings


First Gold Hops to go in


Boiling


Harvesting the Creme Egg centers
WARNING! - NOT FOR THE FAINT HEARTED!




In they gooo.


Cooling


Final Gravity / Brix readings
Ended up with 12.7 Brix, which is 1.051. 15L wort collected. Looks like I'm just slightly over 75% efficiency batch sparging.


In with the Fuller's yeast


In the primary



All in all, a good brew day! In all honesty, I'm not really optimistic about the beer having a Creme Egg flavour! I just though it'd be fun

Fuller's yeast look to be amazing, very very flocculant, and an amazing aroma coming from the primary. Hear rumors of it being quite buttery, so leaving in the primary for a good couple of weeks.

err... a strange one this, but I'll be intrigued how it tastes.

how do you know what sugars the egg centres will give? did you include this in your calculations?

What happened to all those lovely chocolate egg shells, were you not tempted to throw some of them in?

Have to aplaud your desire to experiment!


EDIT: You've made me feel thirsty and hungry at the same time!

you sir, are a hero!

Garth wrote: how do you know what sugars the egg centres will give? did you include this in your calculations?

Funnily enough, Beer Engine did not have Creme Egg Fondant Centers in its database!

So I added it as 180g sucrose ("Sugar, Household White")

Even if they're not 100% fermentable, the 5% ABV should be a maximum for the brew.

Thanks for all the comments!!!

delboy wrote:What happened to all those lovely chocolate egg shells, were you not tempted to throw some of them in?

SWIMBO 'disposed' of the shells!

Was going to throw some in, but apparently the fat content in dairy chocolate would affect the head of the beer (i.e. no head).

andybiochem wrote:

delboy wrote:What happened to all those lovely chocolate egg shells, were you not tempted to throw some of them in?

SWIMBO 'disposed' of the shells!

Was going to throw some in, but apparently the fat content in dairy chocolate would affect the head of the beer (i.e. no head).

If used chocolate in a beer before and i managed to have a lovely creamy head (it was a stout) you might have needed to have thrown in a bit more wheat but don't believe the naysayers about chocolate and zero head retention, you'll find none have actually tried it themselves.

Probably got you in SWMBO good books though

andybiochem wrote:Funnily enough, Beer Engine did not have Creme Egg Fondant Centers in its database!

well my Promash certainly does, you should have bought that.......

it has entries for :-
Creme eggs and those minty ones Sid Little used to advertise,
Wasps (wait till you brew in summer and see why)
Spiders
Coco Pops
Peanut Butter
Mouse droppings
Marmite



good luck with the brew

You sir, are a genius!!! Looking forward to hearing how this turns out...

Garth wrote: Coco Pops

Now that ... is an outstanding idea. Why haven't I thought of that before?

Actually.... don't answer that

Eggselent, cracking idea!

Hope it turns out as good as it looks, well done that man..

I suppose you have great EGGSpectations for this brew (wasn't that a book by charles chickens )

This sounds like something that GarySmiff would be proud of

Creative and very clever. I love it!