Strangest, Most Interesting/Experimental Homebrews to Date? Go!

Pickle Gose a couple of years ago. Luckily it came out exactly as I hoped. Mixed ferm gose as the base beer, secondary on sliced English cucumbers and a small amount of dill. Came out super refreshing, citrus, herbal, light salinity and acidity. Would definitely brew again.

 

Sadly I'm just not a very adventurous brewer lol. Did some things like a rum barrel aged coconut porter, bourbon barrel aged coffee dopplebock (both using oak spirals soaked in said liquor). A Bread Pudding Quad. A cucumber kolsh. Pretty standard stuff these days haha.

 

It wasn't very adventurous for unusual flavor ingredients, but I had some small amounts of malt and hop ingredients that I threw together and called it Junkyard Ale. I gave no flavor compatibility consideration to the ingredients -- just threw them all together to see what would happen. It actually tasted pretty good. It was a dark beer so I must have had some dark grains in it, but I don't recall it being very hoppy. It was probably close to being a black ale. I made notes of the ingredients in case it was a 'miracle' beer, but I never recreated it.

 

Drinkable? Spelt malt saison w/ lavender & rose water in which I used some leftover whey from some goat cheese I had made in the mash.

Undrinkable? Imperial Belgian stout w/ black cardamom.

I mess around with interesting ingredients fairly often (currently fermenting a saison w/ sansho and orange peel), but usually not too extreme.

 

I do not know whether “experimental” is to right way to characterize this beer but a few years ago I formulated a beer that I brand as Smoky & Spicy Brown Ale. Some details below:

Smoky & Spicy Brown Ale

Grain bill:

• Pale Malt: 47%
• Weyermann Smoked Malt: 28%
• Rye Malt: 19%
• English Dark Crystal: 4%
• English Chocolate Malt: 2%

Single temperature infusion mash: 154 °F

Yeast: US-05

OG = 1.051, FG = 1.012

Hop Schedule:

• German Magnum 14.1% 60 min. 0.5 oz.
• East Kent Goldings 4% 15 min. 0.5 oz.
• East Kent Goldings 4% 15 min. 0.5 oz.

I brewed another batch last fall and it was very popular with friends and family.

Cheers!

 

I've made a number of experimental brews, many during the 1990's when there was far less information about what each ingredient adds to a recipe. Thus the results were interesting but not as good as if I were to make it today.

More recently, my most experimental beer was a breadpudding beer (as @Soneast also mentioned above). At the time, I had no precedent to follow, so designed my own recipe entirely from scratch. My goal was to capture that wonderful taste of the whipped raisin breadpudding that my grandmother used to make 50 decades ago. I tried to capture the whole breadiness of it, the raisin taste, the cinnamon, milk, etc. The result wasn't too bad but could have been improved.

 

Yeah, sorry I should have mentioned that @OldBrewer was the inspiration for Bread pudding quad recipe, and I started with his recipe.


Here's the original thread.
https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/bread-pudding-beer.398203/

 

Here is the recipe for the breadpudding beer:

O.G.: 1.080
IBU: 21
SRM: 32

Grain Bill:

• Canadian 2-Row: 53.7%
• Rye Malt: 16.6%
• Special B: 3.6%
• Oats: 9.5%
• Munich Malt: .5%
• Crystal Malt: 2.4%
• Wheat Malt: 4.7%

Special Ingredients:

• 1 lb. lactose
• 6 vanilla beans soaked in Bourbon
• 4 cinnamon sticks

Hops:

• U.S. Brewers Gold, 10.5% alpha, 60 min.
• Halertau, 5.75% alpha, 60 min.

Yeast:

Wyeast 1007 German Ale

Single temperature Infusion mash at 150 F.

 

A bread pudding beer sounds good...love me some bread pudding. Would you agree that the spices could be tweaked easily enough, but nailing the dark sugary, cooked raisin character would be key?
Is anything in the posted recipe changed from what you brewed?

Holy moly, you really are the OldBrewer!

 

The milky breadiness and dark sugary cooked raisin character is the key. There may be other malts that provide an even better breadiness and raisin character. I even thought of adding raisins themselves (as Sam Calagione does in his excellent Dogfish Head Raisin D'Etre and Raisin D'Extra), but the malts used provide that 'raisiny' taste. The spices can be altered - for example, the vanilla is not necessary. I think a touch of cinnamon is needed, but you can alter the amount. The lactose provides the milky taste in breadpudding, and also provides a little unfermentable sweetness that breadpudding has.

I made it in 2016. Here are my notes after trying it:

"It really does taste like bread pudding. The only thing I would do different next time is add a little more lactose and vanilla. The cinnamon is just right - just subtle. Maybe a little more raisin taste would also be helpful."

Yes, I am getting on in age (73 in a couple of months) but still feel like I'm in my 30's. The alcohol has preserved me well :-)

It was an experimental beer, so I would be interested in any changes you may come up with.

 

@OldBrewer you said "the vanilla is not necessary", but your notes at tasting indicate "add a little more lactose and vanilla".
Bread pudding can be different depending on locale, and even the desirability of certain characteristics will vary from one person to the next. For me, vanilla is an essential flavoring in the bread pudding I enjoy.
My favorite examples are typically recipes from Cajun country of south Louisiana. As you might know, folks from Acadia migrated to south Louisiana; "Cajun" is a local derivative of Acadian.

Not sure where you are in Ontario, but it's possible your grandmothers recipe and the ones I enjoy are inordinately similar.

 

The vanilla to me is essential, the more the better, but for others it may not be. I know some people who do not like vanilla. For them, a lot of lactose may be sufficient.

Yes, the Cajuns originated from the Canadian maritimes - they were of French descent (much of the eastern part of Canada is still French).

My grandmother was southern Dutch, and used a Dutch recipe. I believe the original concept was British, and they use chunks of bread in their recipe, but the whipping part was a Dutch variation - smooth and creamy - no chunks. I know she only used stale white bread, not brown bread, which seemed to whip better and gave it a creamy texture.

If I can find it, I'll post my grandmother's breadpudding recipe.

 

Grandmother’s Bread Pudding Recipe


Ingredients

Old stale bread (white or brown)

Butter

Raisins (washed)

Milk (heated)

1 or 2 eggs

Cinnamon

Lemon rind

Sugar (white or brown)

Instructions

1. Take crust off bread;

2. Soak bread in heated milk;

3. Add raisins, egg yolks, cinnamon, lemon rind;

4. Beat ingredients with a fork until creamy;

5. Add stiffly beaten egg whites, and some sugar;

6. Put in buttered oven dish;

7. Top with bread crumbs, sugar, cinnamon, pieces of butter, to form a brown crust.

[Note - this recipe does not include vanilla, but I'm sure she added it. She never wrote down her recipes, so it may have been missed by my mother].

 

I'm going to try something dumb with old grains and yeast. Mash normal, cool then pour everything in a bucket with a bag and add the yeast and let it ferment with the grains. Fill a few bottles and see what happens. A little twist to no boil.

 

Good ideal. I was trying to figure out what to do with the hops. Maybe I'll use some extract.