Maybe an odd question, but I was wondering if anyone has used their DIY flavorings in homebrew applications? I have a Blonde Ale fermenting and had the idea of using a classic mix of Cap Sweet and TFA Ripe strawberry for flavoring.
Any recommendations?
Edit to add: Maybe something like Olive Nation strawberry extract would be a better solution. Looking to keg this batch, but may bottle a couple testers with the CAP/TFA for a comparison.
I wouldn't add artificial flavors to beer like this. If for no other reason than I think it would get expensive.
Buy a quart of strawberries and juice them, cook that down until you have about 2 cups of liquid then add a cup of sugar to that and cook until the sugar is completely dissolved. Use the resulting syrup to make a shandy one glass at a time.
edit: this certainly wouldn't be a traditional 50:50 shandy. I'd probably start with a tablespoon of syrup to a pint of beer and adjust from there.
How is that expensive when you can get 4oz of strawberry ripe for like 6 dollars ...
That's enough to put in so much beer ... I mean I put a few drops in 12oz cups of coffee and could still taste every flavor I tried.
Do they taste similar in coffee as they do in your vape? Could I test flavor mixes by putting them in coffee?
I don't know about that but I tried blueberry wild, m-type, dry4 and a few others and they all tasted pretty spot on in coffee as they tasted in a vape .. so maybe?
But obviously some flavors wouldn't taste good in coffee and the ratio would probably be weird. Some flavors I needed 2-3x as many drops as others to taste. But still super cheap.
I did exactly that a few weeks ago with an imperal stout. My club got together and did a tasting with a few drops of about a dozen different flavors we ended up with a coconut, oak and coconut, raspberry and bourbon, vanilla swirl, and a vanilla coconut. We used from 1 to 2 drops per ounce of beer. So far everything tastes amazing. I'll answer any questions you may have.
You would be adding flavoring at bottling/transferring to a keg so you could always add a bit to a poured beer when it's done and see how it tastes. Added bonus is you could pour a few small glasses and find out how different flavors taste. I dont see any reason why it wouldn't work. You could also pour a few buds, millers or any generic low flavor beer to get a good feel for how they add flavor without other flavors getting in the way. People do this with hop pellets to get a feel for how they taste. If you like it just scale it up to a whole batch.
That being said, to me I would much rather add natural flavors by racking on to frozen fruits after primary fermentation has finished. I had a couple raspberry wheat ales last summer. One was clearly artificially flavored. The other clearly wasn't. I enjoyed the natural one way better.
Regardless let us over at r/homebrewing know how it works out!
You might want to check out some sites for flavoring companies that include beverage flavoring in their 'intended usage' literature.
Silver Cloud Estates I know has info on this. also, Amoretti lists rec usage for food as 1% by weight and separage beverage usage list at 0.01%-0.02%.
Inawera also has a separate flavoring line just for beverages (i.e. flavoring vodka, etc..)
I used to homebrew. It would be interesting to see what would happen or you boiled the DIY flavoring because you would pretty much have to.
The biggest challenge/trick to home brewing is keeping everything clean and sterile. The grains and hops all get boiled so any flavoring would have to be boiled as well.
Good point about sterilization, particularly if it's a re-packaged flavoring. I'd feel better about using a fresh bottle straight from the source, since the manufacturers have to be FDA compliant. A safer bet would be an alcohol based extract flavoring, since I don't think I want to boil PG.
That being said, lots of folks (myself included) have done secondary fermentation on fruit/berries without boiling first with no issue. I'm just trying to be a bit lazy and avoid the fruit matter this time around.
You can 100% do it and come out very good. Belgium has a long tradition of flavoring white beer. The method they use is they make the beer first and put in the flavoring while bottling it. A very good combination for white beer is strawberry or any other berry really.
Never tried it myself, but would it not put a pretty artificial taste in the beer?
I have thought about it but never have. Maybe try kegging it plain then add some flavor to cups before you pour to figure out its impact. Then decarbonate and add in a scaled up amount and recarbonate. That kinda sounds like a pain, but also a good excuse to drink on a Saturday afternoon
The brewery across the street from me does this.
They have a phenomenal coconut beer, and just recently came out with a bananas foster.
I asked him at the end of the night what flavoring company he uses but I've since forgotten... (The coconut beer is really, really good. Also a 5 hour commander game that ended with one salty competitive player didn't help.)
I used to brew professionally here in the UK. Every christmas, we'd chuck some flavours in a firkin* or two to give it a fruity seasonal flavour at our brewery tap. Did an orange and almond chocolate stout. That was good.
A friend of mine put half a bottle (5ml) of a white chocolate flavouring in one of his Cascade, Citra & Centennial pale ales too. That worked really well!
*72 UK pints (568ml)