Fig and Lime Beer

When I do IPAs I instantly think of pine, citrus, and floral flavors. I'd defer to others for lime and fig. Maybe a spicy earthy hop to compliment if you really want to go the IPA route.

You can get a Lot of heavy dark fruit (figgy raisin) flavor out of Special B malt. This is generally seen in darker beers. Nothing wrong with a dark Saison. Lots of Saison fans on the forum that can help here too. For the lime flavor you're going to scratch your knuckles from zesting limes. Two or three would give you a great flavor in a beer. That could compliment a heavy dry hop of something like Centenneal, Citra, Amarillo, if you want to Americanize it. Saaz is certainly worth noting.

Ginger and lime are penultimate, IMHO. Ginger and fig would need soy sauce. Not so great. Food for thought.

 

I'm thinking that the hops in an IPA or pale ale would clash with the fig flavor, so I vote saison. I've never brewed with extras added such as you're going to do, so I can't be of any help there. I just wanted to get in my vote for the saison choice.

 

I could see light lime flavor going decently with saison but I'm struggling to imagine fig and saison flavors marrying well. How about a Belgian Pale, our even a Belgian Brown?

 

Ok, I have to ask. Why fig and lime? I don't get the combo at all. Fig to me says dark beer and lime says light beer and I don't see the two going together in one beer.

Lime and APA/IPA would work, see Grapefruit Sculpin for a citrus example
Fig and and a Dubbel would probably work, maybe a porter/stout?

 

I thought the same thing too but (of course) Google brings up a few culinary hits.

 

If certain flavors go well together, then the flavors go well together. Food and beer. To a certain extent at least. The challenge is finding a beer style that would compliment it. That is why I suggested a Belgian Pale. The pale malts should compliment the lime and the yeast should compliment the fig. Similar for the Belgian Brown, except that I think that slightly darker malts (toast, light roast, chocolate) would work well with not only the fig, but also the lime as well. Think about how citrus and chocolate are often paired together. And then as far as the Belgian yeast, again, the Belgian yeasts esters should compliment the fig.

 

Use a little Special B to enhance the fig, make an Old Ale, add the fig at flameout, and then secondary it with some lime peels.

 

Right now you have almost 25% crystal malts in your grain bill. That's a lot. I would suggest dropping the carapils entirely and reduce the caravienne to 1-1.25# max., then up the base malt to compensate.

And I'm guessing you are choosing Moteuka because of the lime flavors/aromas it is said to impart. Could be weird, could be genius. I've never used them before so who knows? Perhaps flip your last two hop additions so more of Moteuka's lime aromas come through. At 30 minutes, it might go by unnoticed. I think it's kind of cool that Saaz is a parent of Moteuka and that you are using both in this recipe.

 

Since these two ingredients are being used as flavoring, you could consider making a tincture out of vodka with each one, and then add each liquid to your personal taste preference at the time of bottling. If your recipe is for 5 gallons of beer, you probably want to make 16 ounce tinctures of each so that you don't run out of either tincture when adding, but I doubt that you'll need to add the full 16 oz. of either one (although that will depend on how strong your flavoring is, so the stronger the better and you can use less of them when adding to the beer). If you choose this method you'll have greater control over the flavor rather than trying to figure out how much of either ingredient and how long in the secondary. However, use caution when stirring them into your bottling bucket to get them fully mixed in for sampling. You don't want to create ANY splashing when stirring so that you minimize the oxygen that could also be absorbed into your beer.

The more that I think about the mix of these two flavors, the more I think that you HAVE TO report back about how it turns out.

 

Definitely report back on how this turns out