So My homebrew club is hosting an "Iron Brewer" competition and we crowd sourced the mystery ingredient from the patrons of a local brewery. And the winner is......Nilla wafers. (I'm just glad that they didn't pick a whole pumpkin pie) I've got a couple of concerns that I would like to throw out there for comment: Do you folks think that 8# of Munich malt (Wyerman) and 5# of wheat malt would have enough diastatic power to convert 2# of crushed up vanilla wafers? There is soybean oil in the cookies. Will that totally ruin any chance of foam in the final beer? Does a DunkNillaWeizen sound good to anyone else?
My recommendation for an iron brew is to pick a base recipe that will highlight the ingredient. Those malts you chose will completely cover up any nilla wafer flavor you want. I recommend a saison recipe base with Pilsner malt. "Dry wafer" the crap out of it
Dry wafer? I wouldn't dump a bunch of unconverted wheat flour into fermented beer so I'm not about to dry wafer anything.
Dunknillaweizen sounds great! You could try a process that gets the oil out of pecans, toast in the oven and pat dry with paper towels. That's all I got. I'm interested in the process of adding weird mashables but have yet to do it.
My first thought was a Nilla-stout (actually my first thought based on the thread title was "what the hell??? ) but you would need a lot of wafers if you wanted anything to show up in a stout. I think your dunkel version might work. Why not a straight dunkel vs dunkelweizen? Weyerman has a couple different Munich malts (I think 6L and 9L). I would defer to any experts who show up here, but my guess is the 6L would have enough diastatic power to convert itself and something else, don't know about the more kilned version.
@bushycook That's the idea anyway @wspscott I thought that the Banana/clove flavors from the yeast would go nicely with the vanilla cookie flavor.
Why would you want to add that crap to your beer after fermenting? Sounds terrible. Wheat and other solids.. yuck
'Agreed. Munich has enough to convert itself. Wheat malt has more than enough to convert itself and with enough left over to attack the starches in vanilla wafers.
1. Yes 2. Maybe rack from underneath any oil slick and maybe that wheat will help with head? 3. Not sure. I would think the path to victory is with nilla front and center. Clove/banana/bubble gum could distract, although banana and nilla wafers is a classic, so perhaps if the ester/phenol balance were just right...
