Jalapeno Business

[Torpedo Brewing]

Good day fellow maritime brewers,

Been looking into adding Jalapeno into an ale very soon and have done quite a bit of research. My target is balance of obvious presence of jalapeno aroma and moderate heat to the ale, just nothing that you wouldn't be able to finish a few glasses because of how hot it is. If anyone else has any previous experience and/or advice with incorporating this pepper into brewing it'd be much appreciated!

Cheers,

Torpedo Brewing

[RubberToe]

I haven't brewed with peppers (yet?) but have considerable experience with them. I don't know if this has come up in your research but you may want to scrape out the seeds and placenta since there is a lot of capsaicin there (what makes them hot). This should increase the flavour / heat ratio. Who knows, depending on how many you're planning on adding it might not be spicy enough.

Cheers, and good luck.
-Rob

[GAM]

I think I would grind up a measured amount and dry pepper 20l with a small amount to get an idea of the flavor vs heat.

Rob is, of course correct with the seeds and veins being hot but I can't picture what balance you would need shin to innards.

Sandy

[LiverDance]

I've had very good results putting the peppers in tinfoil and putting them on the bbq for a a couple of minutes to extract some of the juices from them and soften them up. You will get good flavor and heat in about 3 days of secondary

[Toni]

I have only attempted this once. After some research I removed the seeds, sterilized the peppers, and popped them into the secondary. The longer you keep the peppers in the secondary, the more heat you extract, and it does so fairly quickly. I think I left them there for two weeks, but I only had a small number of peppers and I like my spicy beer (i.e. Garrison's original Jalapeno Ale).

Brian's idea of throwing the peppers on the bbq sounds like it would work well.

[LiverDance]

Here is the the verbage of what I found before we did ours:

Quarter about 5 jalapenos, put them on a piece of foil and put them in the barbeque grill for about 4 minutes with it pretty hot inside. This makes the peppers soften up and start sweating out their peppery goodness. Then throw them straight in a strainer bag (optional) and into the secondary. Secondary for 3-7 days depending on how much heat you want the brew to have.

[Jayme]

I'm a big fan of flame out fruit (etc) additions... I know most sources you'll read totally advise against this, but I just tried it one time and it worked out great. I'll admit that maybe it takes a bit more ingredients to get the result you want (I've not tested that at all) but for less hassle and greater sanitation piece of mind, I'm a total supporter of doing it this way.

[mackay85]

Have a friend who did a Jalapeno Ale last year and turned out great. I'll get him to pop on here and post how he did his.