Smoke Bomb Imperial Smoked Chipotle Porter!

[seymour]

This is not my recipe, I've never brewed it, but I tasted a version at homebrew club meeting last night. It was absolutely delicious, so I had to share the love. Don't take my word for it, it also won Silver at the 2013 National Homebrew Challenge.

See the US store's website: http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/smok ... n-kit.html
Or the detailed recipe PDF: http://www.northernbrewer.com/documenta ... keBomb.pdf

Here's my simplified summary:

Smoke Bomb Imperial Smoked Chipotle Porter
Northern Brewer Homebrew Supply in West Allis, Wisconsin, USA
OG: 1066
Grainbill: 54.9% 2-Row Pale, 15.7% Munich, 11.8% Cherrywood Smoked, 7.8% UK Dark Crystal, 5.9% UK Pale Chocolate, 2% UK Black Malt, 2% Midnight Wheat
Mash: 60 min @ 154°F
Hops: Nugget (60 min), Goldings (15 min and flame-out)
Added to secondary fermentor: 1 oz deseeded chipotle peppers/5 gal batch
IBU: 35
Colour: opaque black
Yeast: "Chico"/American Ale/Sierra Nevada, available as WLP001, Wyeast 1056, Safale US-05, etc.

A couple pointers for my UK mates:
This is formulated as US gallons, which is only 4.16 Imperial gallons or 18.9 liters
Don't get hung up on the brand names. You may subsitute any pale, any smoke malt, any debittered black malt, any grapefruity high-alpha hop, etc.
I still say any high-attenuating English ale yeast would be better than Chico.
For those who don't know, a chipotle is a jalepeno chili pepper which was allowed to redden to full maturity, then smoked and dried. Any hot peppers should work.

[Fuggled Mind]

That looks like an awesome recipe. I've often wondered how a chipotle would taste in a stout or porter. Supposedly, chiles were said to have been one of many of the bizarre ingredients included in porters by 'out of London' brewers.

Not sure how easily they are available in England since I lived there but I always used to get mine from the www.coolchile.co.uk

Cheers

Jason

[seymour]

Exactly. The night before I was skimming some English brewing manuals from the 1800s, and several of them called for capsicum in porter brewing, "for a warming sensation." So when I saw this at the homebrew meeting, my first thought was, "this guy has no idea how authentic this actually is!"

As the good book says, "there's nothing new under the sun."

[legion]

Thanks Seymour am tempted to brew this.

[seymour]

Thanks Seymour am tempted to brew this.

It was really, really tasty. The guy supposedly followed the recipe exactly, and the way his turned out the smokiness and chili-pepper essence was fairly strong in the aroma, but the flavour was full-on robust porter, very little heat actually. Only a hint in the aftertaste, which I liked.

I've had other crazy-hot pepper beers, like with habaneros and ghost chilis and stuff, which burned my mouth like fire for hours. This particular recipe wasn't like that, it was a very drinkable balance.

[Barley Water]

Ok so I'm a Texan and Texan's know hop peppers. Here's a tip you will thank me for if you decide to mess with a recipe like this: when preparing the peppers, under no circumstances do you want to touch your eyes without first throughly washing your hands. For many people (myself included) it is common to touch your face, it's an unconcious nervious jesture some people make. If you do that with pepper juice on your hand you will be extremely sorry, just trust me on this.

[oz11]

Seymour, your grain percentages don't add up to 100%. Looks like you're missing the Munich.

[seymour]

Ok so I'm a Texan and Texan's know hop peppers. Here's a tip you will thank me for if you decide to mess with a recipe like this: when preparing the peppers, under no circumstances do you want to touch your eyes without first throughly washing your hands. For many people (myself included) it is common to touch your face, it's an unconcious nervious jesture some people make. If you do that with pepper juice on your hand you will be extremely sorry, just trust me on this.

So true! BW, my man, have you tasted Peruvian Rocotos? 100,000-350,000 Scoville. Once while camping, I was chopping one into my eggs, no gloves, and like an idiot scratched an itch next to my eye. I ran screaming to the nearby creek and plunged my whole face into the freezing water for a good while! It stung all day long. It was years ago and my kids still tease me about it.

[seymour]

Seymour, your grain percentages don't add up to 100%. Looks like you're missing the Munich.

Good catch, thanks! I updated the original post. It looks like I accidentally omitted the Munich, but listed the Munich percentage with the Smoked. In any case, it's fixed now. Sounds like you found the more useful PDF anyway. Cheers!

[jaroporter]

Ok so I'm a Texan and Texan's know hop peppers. Here's a tip you will thank me for if you decide to mess with a recipe like this: when preparing the peppers, under no circumstances do you want to touch your eyes without first throughly washing your hands. For many people (myself included) it is common to touch your face, it's an unconcious nervious jesture some people make. If you do that with pepper juice on your hand you will be extremely sorry, just trust me on this.

..or go for a piss.. and spend the next hour drifting out of conversations wondering to yourself if there's really a warm sensation in your pants.. okay now i'm sure my nuts are burning, but why? do i mention something.. ?

the recipe.. looks delicious. may have to do something with this information, thanks!

[Deebee]

I made a chocolate and chili stout last year. used 0.5 grams chipotle pr litre and it was enough. If you were unlucky to get a lot of foam at the start of the session you managed to get a real burn in the mouth. the good thing is though that these are deceptive and the slight burny tingle type thing, makes you want to drink more........ never ending circle:)

[DaveyT]

If things get hot, milk works well. I went to the bathroom after chopping a scotch bonnet and got into all sorts of trouble. Milk sorted it right out.

[seymour]

I made a chocolate and chili stout last year. used 0.5 grams chipotle pr litre and it was enough...

That makes sense. I guess .5 grams x 18.9 Liters = 9.45 g, which converts to .33 oz, right?
This recipe calls for .5 oz chipotles for the same batch size, just a bit more.

It's not an exact science. Much depends on the specific peppers, and how they meld with all the other ingredients, alcoholic content, etc.

[Barley Water]

The thing with hot peppers is that the "heat" can be radically different from one pepper to the next. For that reason, it's a little difficult to predict how much heat you'll end up with by say using X grams/gallon or whatever. For that reason I think the safe play would be to make up a tincture of pepper juce then dose it into a measured sample of beer until you get it where you want it. Of course, that tincture is going to be very potent stuff so for the reasons cited above, be extremely careful with it. Strangly, I have had maybe only a couple of pepper beers in the entire time I have been brewing (30+ years) which I really enjoyed; most of the ones I've tried have been way too hot. Best one I remember has just a bit of heat but your could really get that pepper flavor which surprisingly was a little on the sweet side. Still though, not the sort of beer to quaff in quantity and I'm not sure I would would to get that stuff in my tap lines and rubber keg components.