Narrow Gauge Forest Farm is a farm in Perry County, Pennsylvania, that cultivates mushrooms using hardwood logs from the forests of Pennsylvania. Chris and Lauren Chubb use the back portion of their property in the forest to grow several varieties of mushrooms on a cleared area where an abandoned rail line is located (the common rail sizes of the era were standard gauge and narrow gauge, which inspired the farm’s name). 

After meeting the Chubbs at the local farmer’s market, we started discussing the possibility of brewing a beer using mushrooms. Besides my homebrewing, which I still do regularly, I am also the brewer at Lindgren Craft Brewery in nearby Duncannon, Pennsylvania. With our brewery motto being “Adventurously Brewed,” we felt like we had to take on this opportunity to make a special collaboration. To be adventurous we wanted to go along for the ride with Narrow Gauge Forest Farm and help them with all the tasks that it takes to grow and harvest mushrooms, then use those mushrooms in the brewing process. The process was one I believe many homebrewers may enjoy taking on as well.

Mushroom Variety Selection

We started by selecting a mushroom variety that we wanted to use. You can grow and/or use any mushroom variety you would like. For our project we reviewed the several varieties that Narrow Gauge cultivates, which includes lion’s mane, oyster (golden, white, and grey), nameko, and shiitake being their main crop. For this year’s inoculation we chose the Night Velvet variety of shiitake mushrooms, which have a unique rich white chocolate character. At Narrow Gauge they have many log stacks from prior years that were inoculated with other shiitake varieties such as WR-46, West Wind, Halo, and Double Jewel. By stacking the logs by variety when harvest time arrives you can keep your varieties separate for individual variety use or mix them as they are harvested. For our project we wanted as much weight as possible so we harvested all of the varieties when they were ready for picking. 

If you plan on skipping the cultivating section and purchasing your mushrooms from your local store then the world is your oyster (mushroom). Whatever variety you choose, it is best to do a little research on the flavor profiles before making your selection. A great example is lion’s mane as it is said to taste like lobster or crab, and is known for making crab cake-like dishes. This may, or may not, be what you are looking for in a beer. 

Shiitake (Lentinula edodes) mushrooms, which we used, are native to East Asia and were introduced into the United States for cultivation in 1972. In Japanese, “shii” comes from the shii tree (Castanopsis cuspidata) which is a hardwood tree similar to oak that mushrooms prefer to grow on, and “take” means “mushroom.” The flavor profile of shiitake mushrooms ranges from earthy, smokey, meaty, buttery, and chocolate. We have noticed that we got all of these descriptors in the mushrooms, but it is all dependent on the growing conditions and especially the time and quality of mushroom during harvest. 

Growing Mushrooms

If you’re into gardening and growing ingredients for your brews, mushrooms are a fun project to take on. We’ll next go through the steps of growing mushrooms, beginning with log selection; however, if you prefer to purchase mushrooms for your brew, feel free to skip ahead and we will pick back up in the brewing section below. 

LOG SELECTION

I was surprised to find out that the logs we selected were not going to be ready until the following year as it takes 9-18 months for the spores to start sprouting. Once the mushrooms fruit out of the logs they will continue to produce throughout the season and will last 4+ years depending on the thickness and quality of the wood. 

Different types of mushrooms prefer different types of wood to grow on. shiitake mushrooms are best grown on deciduous hardwood trees such as oak, sugar maple, beech, alder, ironwood, and sweet gum. It is said the wood variety does not impact the final flavor of the mushrooms, though some chefs would debate that point. This is our second year doing this collaboration project and both years we primarily harvested mushrooms from white oak, with a few from sugar maple logs as well. 

*Disclaimer: We sourced our logs from forests that were located on private property with permission to log. Be sure that you have permission of the property owner before entering and harvesting logs.

During the cold winter months, the deciduous trees are in hibernation mode, so January is when we go out into the forest looking for logs. It is best to find areas with large limbs or trunks that have already fallen to the ground. It is best not to go cutting down trees that are alive and well. We do not want large logs that are difficult to move, instead we would rather have smaller logs that are cut to 3-4 feet (0.9–1.2 m) long with a diameter of 4-6 inches (10–15 cm). Keeping the logs small helps with moving from the woods to the soaking tanks, and then to the fruiting area. 

After the tree limbs have been cut into the desired size you must wait roughly four weeks for the tree’s natural immune system to then die off. If you do not wait there is a possibility that the tree’s lingering immune system will kill the mycelium inoculation. At the beginning of this waiting period, stack the logs in a square to allow the most surface area exposed to the air.

INOCULATION 

For shiitake mushrooms in Pennsylvania, the end of March and early April are warm and damp enough for inoculation of the logs with mycelium. Mycelium is the living mother fungus network where the spores for reproduction are underneath the cap. We are not interested in cultivating from spores; rather we want the living organism to be inoculated. Mycelium mixed in oak sawdust can be purchased online in 5-lb. (2.3-kg) bags through various suppliers for about $30. A 5-lb. (2.3-kg) mycelium mix is good for inoculating roughly 30 logs, depending on size. Once you receive the mycelium, store it in the refrigerator until ready for use. 

You are going to need to drill holes about 4 inches (10 cm) apart in an off-centered pattern around the log. Each hole is 7⁄10-inch (18-mm) wide and 2 inches (5 cm) deep. Avoid drilling in knots. Drill out the holes on the log first then fill the holes with the mycelium mix, called a plug. There is a useful tool that is simply called an inoculation device that can pack the right amount of mix into a plug and release it with a plunger in the holes for optimal use. This speeds up the process and makes it much easier, but you can also use a funnel and stick. 

Once the holes are filled with the mycelium mix you seal the holes with melted food-grade wax at around 300 °F (150 °C), which is warm enough to melt the wax, but not so hot to kill the living mycelium. This wax protects against insects. The wax can be heated on the stove with a temperature gauge to monitor heat, however Chris and Lauren Chubb held a large chunk of wax and used a hot rounded griddle with a temperature setting on the heating element from the thrift store. There is a sponge on a metal stick that makes applying the hot wax easy and fast (shown in the bottom image to the right). 

Once the logs have been inoculated and waxed, a Mason jar lid was screwed into one of the log ends and the date and variety of mushroom the log is inoculated with is written on it. 

The lots are then restacked in a log cabin-like square about chest high in an area with about 60–80% shade and 30% or higher humidity levels. Sometimes it is appropriate to cover the stacks with pine branches for extra shade and retention of humidity. While stacked the logs rest to allow a spawn run of 9–18 months. This is where the living mycelium works its way into the wood before fruiting into mushrooms. Logs that are inoculated in March will be ready for fruiting in late May of the following year. 

SOAKING AND GROWING

The cold wet environment of early spring helps start the fruiting process of shiitake mushrooms. Using this knowledge, mushroom cultivators can use a cold water soak for 24 hours, which will help jumpstart the mycelium to produce fruiting mushrooms just as in nature, but faster. Once the logs have been soaked you restack the wood and await fruiting and harvest. If you do not soak the logs for that initial jumpstart then the logs are just left stacked as the mushroom’s fruit. The mushrooms that are grown outside on logs are more likely to experience stress from the weather causing the mushrooms to grow slower, but they result in heartier and more flavorful mushrooms than those grown inside.

Shiitake mushrooms sprout in about four days and pop out of the log, then in about four more days the mushrooms begin to fruit. In early spring and late autumn, cold temperatures at night that drop below 58 °F (14 °C) can stop the growth. Colder autumn weather towards the end of the season in October will slow the growth and stunt the quality of the mushroom. On the positive side with cold temperatures, there is no need to soak the logs. 

For those that raise free range poultry like chickens and ducks, they are great to have around the logs as they eat many of the pests such as slugs. 

HARVEST

At first I was mistaken by thinking that you only get one harvest per season, however that is not the case. Shiitake mushrooms start fruiting in early May–June and will continue to produce throughout the season until early- to mid-October when colder weather arrives.

It is best to harvest the mushrooms when the outermost part of the cap called the fringe separates from the underside of the cap where the gills and spores are located. Once the fringe separation has occurred the mushroom is ready to harvest. You don’t want the mushroom to fully open like a pancake. The log will continue to fruit and produce mushrooms through the season so how long and how big you want the mushrooms to be is up to the grower. Every decision you make in the growing and harvesting process, and how long you have them between harvest and brewing, will slightly alter the flavor of the mushrooms. 

When brewing homebrew-sized batches, we found that you can usually harvest enough mushrooms in one harvest then move on with your brew day. However, when brewing larger commercial batches — unless you have a huge mushroom farm — multiple harvests will be necessary to meet the recipe quota. The few days waiting from harvest and brew will cause various drying rates and a blend of mushrooms from freshly picked to dried/aged 3 or so days. This will give slightly different characteristics based on your particular situation. I find it similar to single-hop variety blending when you have multiple days worth of harvest from larger farms vs. a smaller farm’s single day harvest during the golden picking time of “now.”

A general rule of thumb is that you can harvest roughly 1.5 pounds (0.68 kg) of fresh mushrooms every year per foot of log. Depending on log size and weather conditions, a single 4-ft log could yield 6 pounds (2.7 kg) per year, or upwards of 24 pounds (~11 kg) over a log’s average lifespan of four years before the decomposition of the wood makes the log unusable. If you choose to dry the mushrooms then the percentage of weight loss will depend on your drying method. I suggest using the mushrooms as fresh as possible.

Brewing with Mushrooms

Our test batch was a 12-gallon (45-L) post-boil recipe using 30 pounds (13.6 kg) of fresh shiitake mushrooms (2.5 pounds of mushrooms per gallon, or 300 g/L). We really enjoyed the beer and how the fresh shiitake mushrooms complemented the overall beer profile. The plan and recipe for the following year’s batch was on the 3-bbl system (110 gallons/415 L actual post-boil volume). Using the same dosing rate we would need a whopping 275 pounds (125 kg)! Concerns were made that we might be exceeding Narrow Gauge’s yearly capacity, as well as concerns around handling our own harvesting and storage for that amount. For the second year we had a poor growing season for everyone, including our state’s hop growers. Given that poor growing season, we were not sure if we could achieve our absurd target harvest goals. We eventually decided to brew another small, this time 20-gallon (76-L), batch. Narrow Gauge Forest Farm harvested shiitake mushrooms from our stack throughout the harvest season and yielded a total of 23 pounds (10.5 kg) of mushrooms that were frozen after harvest. This included the entire range of mushrooms from early harvest to late harvest. We used them all in the batch to create a uniform flavor that I think actually added a bit of mushroom flavor depth that we initially did not consider vs. using all fresh from a single harvest. 

Depending on if you grow your own or are buying mushrooms, you have options of using fresh, frozen, or dried mushrooms, which are each unique:

FRESH

Fresh is best! The shiitakes at harvest were lightly earthy in aroma, but when you cut them open you were hit with an intense, sweet white chocolate aroma and soft butter meaty flavor. The aroma really filled up the brewery and we laughed all day about how that white chocolate aroma came from those shiitake mushrooms. Depending on your recipe size, if you plan your brew day in alignment with harvesting you might be able to use 100% fresh mushrooms. 

If you are not growing mushrooms and are choosing to purchase your mushrooms from the store it is best to choose a place that has the freshest products. Many farmer’s markets offer a wide variety of fresh mushrooms from local growers that you can choose from for your recipe.

FROZEN

We had some freshly harvested shiitake mushrooms frozen in a common household deep freezer and we noticed that the mushrooms held up fairly well. Some of the lighter delicate aromatics faded, but overall the flavor, character, and firmness were still intact. For our second batch we came across an equipment issue at the brewery that pushed back our scheduling and 3-barrel batch size, but when it comes to farming and harvesting there is no waiting. For this reason we fell back on freezing the majority of the harvest in a deep freezer in Ziplock bags until we could brew with them. 

This situation was not ideal, but with no way to dry and package the full mushroom harvest, along with a generally poor growing season, we chose to brew another small batch with what we had frozen and their last harvest. With a look into Google’s searches on the topic of toxicity of deep freezing shiitake mushrooms I did not find any evidence of toxins being formed when storing in a deep freezer. We did not see much change in the physical character of the mushroom, however there is a chance of them getting mushy. In the end, you are placing these frozen/thawed mushrooms into the mash tun/whirlpool so I am not too picky on appearance. There are articles and instructions on freezing mushrooms for culinary purposes that include steaming or adding oil to keep them plump once thawed. I personally feel that actions like these will take away from the overall character of the mushroom, this includes freezing, and I will again recommend that fresh is best when possible.

DRIED

It is said that you can pick up a pleasant smoky undertone as the mushrooms age and begin to dry or dehydrate. This is something that we noticed as the older mushrooms from the earlier harvest started to age. The smoky character was more in the aroma than the flavor, and was reminiscent of a deep, rich, sweet raisin, pipe tobacco. I feel that having a portion of these aged/dried mushrooms really added to the overall complexity of the resulting mushroom character in the beer. 

Please note that we used naturally aged and partially dried mushrooms to get this mushroom profile — not rapid dehydration and packaging of fresh mushrooms at the time of harvest. We have yet to experiment with that option, mainly due to the logistics and better options. Shiitake mushrooms have around a 75% water content, which is lower than most mushroom varieties. This means that you should get a denser mushroom with more flavor impact per pound, and have less loss if deciding to dry and package. 

CHOOSING A BEER STYLE

When we get to brew with a unique ingredient, we brewers can’t help but to think of fun styles to apply it to. When given the chance, it is best to try a sample of the mushroom variety as the descriptions for them are good and close, but there are small nuances that will make the beer shine and might have been missed. With that said, know your mushroom variety and typical character profile and let your imagination run wild. 

Some fun examples of mushroom and beer styles include: 

• Lion’s mane (crab-like): Kölsch, lager

• Shiitake (white chocolate, buttery): Golden Belgian strong ale, barleywine or big beer, saison, IPA

• Oyster (anise, woody): Brown ale, saison 

• Portobello (earthy, meaty): Porter, stout, imperial stout

• Button mushroom (meaty, light and delicate umami flavor): Light American lager, cream ale, IPA

• Turkey Tail (earthy, bitter): ESB, Scottish ale, Irish stout, Baltic porter,  pale ale, IPA. 

For our collaboration using shiitake mushrooms we decided to brew a saison as we felt the saison yeast character would play off the mushrooms. 

HOW TO USE THE MUSHROOMS 

By doing this collaboration we are able to purchase a large portion of Narrow Gauge’s yearly shiitake harvest. With that being the case, we can only brew this beer once a year and need to maximize our usage of the mushrooms while keeping the delicate flavors intact. We thinly sliced each mushroom to maximize surface area then placed them in an emptied mash tun. This acted as an extended whirlpool/hopback style “mushroomback.” At such a large dosing rate, we felt that using a nylon bag or cheesecloth would be too problematic and that using the mash tun was the best choice to maximize our ingredient extraction, as well as the ease of brewing logistics and taking clear wort from kettle and off the trub for ideal mushroom wort interaction. As an added benefit, this also allowed us to easily reclaim the mushrooms for later use than had we added them to the kettle or used a bag. We feel the mash tun/whirlpool is the best choice of when to add the mushrooms, however feel free to do what works best for you, your equipment, and your recipe. 

Just like asking a hop head where to add hops in an IPA, you can add mushrooms at any point in your process to achieve different results. You can use them whole, sliced, blended for boil/whirlpool/fermenter additions, or any other inventive way you can imagine at any point of the brewing process to impart the character you are looking for. Just understand the reasoning on why you have chosen the form of mushroom and where you add it. 

HOW MUCH MUSHROOMS TO USE

If you are growing mushrooms then I would suggest using as much as you can harvest. If purchasing from a store, where costs can add up quick, then I would recommend using 1-3 lbs. per gallon post-boil (120–360 g/L). Mushrooms have a unique character that will be imparted on your beer, so the key is to balance it with a compatible beer style and its supporting ingredients to let the mushroom character shine through. In the end, it is up to the brewer to decide on variety, type, when, how, and how much mushrooms to add to their recipe. 

OUR SAISON COLLABORATION 

We have brewed two saison collaborations on a small scale. Our first version was a 6.1% ABV beer that used 2.5 lbs. of sliced shiitakes per gallon (300 g/L). Our second version was also a saison but with a much higher 11% ABV in which we used 1.15 pounds of sliced shiitakes per gallon (140 g/L). The reason for the lower dosing rate in this second batch was due to a larger batch volume dictated by new brewery equipment and a lower harvest yield. Both were delicious, however I believe we were all in agreement that the 6.1% version with the higher mushroom addition rate had the best character, flavor, and drinkability. As such, it’s the recipe provided below.

A NOTE TO FORAGERS

This article has been a story of our brewing collaboration with professionals that know their mushrooms. While we enjoy foraging, it is advised against unless you are 100% certain of the mushrooms you are harvesting and what its possible lookalikes are. Consuming the wrong mushroom can make you extremely ill, hospitalized, or even cause death in some cases.

We’ve been fond of saying over the years that if there’s one weird development of modern humanity it’s been the increased procrustean standards that we place our foods and beverages against. “Is it authentic?” “Is it real beer?” When you dig into humanity’s alcoholic history, it’s terrifically clear that our forerunners didn’t hew to “this is a grain-based beverage,” “this is a sugar beverage,” etc. Time and time again you see confounding mixtures of grains, sugars, and fruits — if it could ferment, then humans used it. 

And maybe some of that modern “guidelines” habit is passing into the mores of yesteryear as we see craft brewers throwing everything they can think of at their brew kettle, fermenters, and kegs in an attempt to entice a patron to spend a little cash. Looking at you – double fruited, double dry hopped sour milkshake hazy IPA (an actual commercial beer that Drew tried).

Fruit has a long history in beer, even with the obsession with beverage purity, and it’s easy to see why. Fruit is fun and colorful, it tastes great, and it adds a different zip to the usual mixture of barley and hops. With relatively little work, fruit can dramatically alter your beer.

Why Am I Adding This?

Before you start thinking about how you’re going to use the gargantuan cornucopia of fruit available to the modern brewer, we’ll remind you of our continual plea: Ask yourself, “Why am I adding this to my beer? Does this make sense?”  

As an example, if you’ve got a potently bitter IPA, throwing fruit into the mix just doesn’t make any sense. If the strongest fruits get lost in the noise, then there’s little point.

But let’s say you’re planning ahead and say, “Self, I’m really fond of strawberries and I need my IPAs. How can I combine these loves of mine?” Then you can structure your IPA in a way that makes sense to allow strawberries to carry forth (use less bitterness, bring in the strawberry-lime flavors from Belma® hops, and get a couple of different strawberry additives). 

Conversely, a lesson that every brewer should commit to memory is the rescue powers of strong fruit flavors. Sometimes your beer doesn’t quite turn out the way you want it to (maybe it’s slightly phenolic or in the case of one of our porters, incredibly tannic) — a quick use of an appropriate fruit or fruit extract product can erase the flaw and make a stellar beer drinking experience!

What Beers to Fruit

Now the question comes, “What beer am I going to fruit?” Since fruit is an added expense to your brew day, brewers tend to look to styles that let it shine like a Klieg light searching the skies for enemy planes. If you look at the world’s fruit-filled beer styles, what do you see? A lot of pale wheat beers, spontaneously fermented ales, and kettle sours. Wheat gives a soft doughy taste that conjures up sunny summer days filled with pies and tarts. Wild sours deliver a diverse and complex canvas to match with fruits. And quick kettle sours mix the world of “ades” (e.g., lemonade) and slushies with an acid bite that pops the fruit character even harder. 

Those are the easy answers, but what about something not all “pale and wheaty?” You know Drew and his love of Belgian styles has led him to add fruit to saisons and tripels galore (including the Dole Whip Tripel at the end of this article).

As you look at more intense styles and beer flavors, you need to think about more intense fruiting. Leave the subtler stone fruits behind and focus on strong berries and tropical fruits. It wouldn’t be out of bounds to create a chocolate cherry stout — actually, that sounds really delicious right now — but maybe more of a fall/winter project! Even an intensely malt-forward barleywine could be enhanced with the addition of dark dried fruits like figs, prunes, and raisins, and Belgian Quad screams for something to play with the naturally occurring plum flavors.

And while you might be tempted to just think malt vs. hops, note how many of these examples depend on an aspect of fermentation — sours as bright fruit punchers, spicy Belgian strains enhancing warm fruit flavors, and plummy/estery yeasts pushing those dark fruits.

What Fruits to Beer

Hopefully by this point you know what fruit you want to add. You probably chose it first and we can’t think of one that hasn’t been used in beer to “great” effect (looking at you Durian Lambic from the 2024 Southern California Homebrewers Fest). Berries are the longtime go-to for brewers — particularly big bold flavor powerhouses like raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries. 

Some fruits are more difficult to capture like the stone fruits. Peach character fades in a New York minute. Watermelon, after fermentation, tastes nothing like watermelon — often coming across as more of the rind character. 

The harder it is to keep the flavor around, the more fruit you’ll need! We once had a strawberry lager project that required pounds and pounds of fresh fruit, that was then augmented with more frozen fruit and even some concentrate and it still tasted like the faint memory of your grandma’s strawberry candies from a block away (read on for the final fix to that fiasco).

Oh, and while we’re talking about impacts – what about the alcohol impact? Fruit is sugar and sugar is booze, right? At least in the case of your less processed/unconcentrated fruits – there’s also a fair amount of water in fruit. Things like orange juice usually come in around 1.048 gravity. If you add a gallon of OJ to a beer that is less than 1.048, you’ve boosted your overall level of sugar. If you add it to a 1.070 IPA, you’ve actually increased your volume, but reduced the overall alcohol concentration! Always check the gravity of the juice to see how it will impact the beer instead of just assuming that an addition of fruit will boost alcohol after fermentation is complete.

Fruit Factor

You’ve chosen your beer, you’ve chosen your fruit, now you’ve got to decide how to squish all that fruity goodness into your glass. The first question in front of you is, “What form of fruit do I go with?” You’ve got options: 

Fresh

The obvious choice — pick (or buy) fresh fruit! That’s what our ancestors always did. A few things to consider: If you’re buying fresh fruit, only buy stuff that’s actually in season and hasn’t been shipped halfway around the world in a container and gassed to appear bright. These fruits are often devoid of flavor to eat, and much worse when used to brew with. The best trick up Drew’s sleeve is to roam his local farmer’s markets right around closing time. Look for the fruit that’s too ripe to hold onto and grab a deal because produce going back to the farm is money not made with extra labor costs. Seriously, one time Drew made a blood orange saison with in-season, beautifully ripe organic Moros for 75% off because they didn’t want to load another 50 lbs. (23 kg) of oranges into the truck!

Once you get your bounty home, give it a quick wash, cut it up (the more surface area, the faster the flavor absorption), bag it into freezer bags, and freeze the fruit. The average household freezer works relatively slowly, creating large jagged ice crystals that work for our “give me all your flavor and sugar” needs. What about sanitation, you ask. Even Drew, who’s normally as paranoid as a tin foil hat, doesn’t sanitize his fruit. He trusts the combination of washing, freezing, and a hostile fermentation environment keeping stray microbes at bay. Depending on the intensity of the fruit you’ve selected, we recommend 1–3 lbs. of fresh fruit per gallon of beer (120–350 g/L). 

Frozen

What if you want to brew a beer with a fruit that isn’t in season and you can’t get it fresh? The easy answer is to skip all that washing and prep work required before you freeze fresh fruit and just buy frozen fruit. It’s convenient, if not slightly more expensive, and has the advantage of being better quality produce than most of what you could buy at the average supermarket, even in season. Just like when brewing with fresh fruit, there is no real need to worry about sanitation — just thaw and dump the previously frozen fruit into the mix.

Juice

It’s easy to find a thousand and one juices at the store, but in general we don’t advocate using juice as your main source of fruit flavor because so many of them are either really cheap and watery (and mostly apple juice) or incredibly expensive and still fairly dilutive of your beer. If you do use a juice, make sure it’s 100% your fruit choices and that it doesn’t have potassium sorbate as a stabilizer (more on that in a bit).

Purees

All the convenience of a juice, but made entirely of the fruit we’re after. If you look at what commercial breweries are doing for their beers, puree is what they use most of the time. Reputable companies like Oregon Fruit Co. produce aseptic fruit purees that are easy to grab and add to any beer on a whim. Just sanitize the package, open the can or pouch, and pour. You do pay more for these products, but they’re high-quality and ready to go. In this case, we feel that both quality and convenience make the expense worth it. One or two cans/pouches (~3 lbs./1.4 kg) delivers the punch of many pounds of fruit. (Note to pay attention to — cans are usually pressure-cooked, so the fruit is “cooked” for a longer period than the aseptic packaging in pouches.) 

Dried

Fruit has been dried for millennia to preserve it and have it at the ready. With their concentrated sugars, these can work well. But make sure you grab “natural” or “unsulfured” fruit to avoid adding sulfur dioxide to your beer. (The right stuff is invariably darker and less inviting to look at, but we’re not looking at it! This may just be a Drew aversion because adding sulfur – even when it should dissipate – is unappealing, so he sticks to the rule of least processing possible.) Just chop it up and let it go. Drew likes the impact of dried apricots over their fresh counterparts. Just a quick chop of 4–8 oz. (~110–225 g) and toss them into the beer. 

And to be space agey, you can also buy “freeze-dried” fruits like strawberries and blueberries. The light-weight fruit can be crushed into a fine powder in the bag before adding to the fermenter. Drew keeps Trader Joe’s freeze-dried fruit pouches on hand – just one or two of the ridiculous light-weight bags (~1.2 ounces/34 g per bag) adds an exhilarating amount of flavor.

Concentrates and Extracts

The last two options to talk about are far more processed. We’re not really fans of the concentrates we’ve tried because — to Drew’s taste — they tend to come off as cooked jam slurry thinned with a bit of water. Extracts, on the other hand, can be used to great effect, particularly in conjunction with actual fruit. On their own, they often read “chemically,” but a hard-to-capture fruit like strawberry can be juiced up with a small addition of extract, which is how we solved the aforementioned strawberry beer in which fruit itself didn’t offer enough flavor.

When to Add Fruit

The last thing to consider with your fruit is when to add it? 

The general rule is the later you add a fruit in fermentation, the more aroma and flavor will remain. But keep in mind the later you add it, the longer it may take to bring the batch to a stable gravity due to reduced yeast activity. Another reason to consider later additions is that fermented fruit doesn’t always taste great  — see how many fermented orange juice projects taste like something has gone “global pandemic crisis movie” levels of wrong.

We both prefer our fermentations to come to a complete stop, both from a stability point of view and a balance perspective, but that’s not the case with a wide swath of fruit beers today that try to arrest fermentation to create a full-on fruit slushy bomb. And a bomb they can be — remember that any yeast in the beer, no matter how tired or overwhelmed — will look at all that free sugar like a glutton looks at an all-you-can-eat buffet. 

To create the slushy effect, allow the beer to ferment out completely and crash it clear. Rack the beer into a purged keg along with a dose of potassium sorbate (aka Sorbistat-K). Add the fruit puree to the keg, seal it, carbonate, and mix vigorously. Since we can’t easily pasteurize, we need to depend on the mix of sorbate’s prevention of a new fermentation with the stabilizing impact of chilling. We don’t recommend bottling or canning the beer because we’re paranoid about bursting fruit-powered hand grenades!

To enhance the slushy experience, you can add a dose of lactose (1 lb. per 5 gallons/0.45 kg per 19 L) to the boil kettle to lend an extra mouthfeel, but overdoing it can make for a beer that drinks like a protein shake. 

If the resulting fruit beer (slushy or non-slushy) feels a bit “flabby” or flat on the palate, take a trick out of the vintner’s playbook and add a small touch of citric, malic, and/or lactic acid. The human palate reads acid as a key component of fresh and bright. If you choose good fruit (or a well-manufactured fruit product), you probably won’t need to do this, but keep it in your brewing toolkit.

Fruit is fun, fresh, and absolutely delivers a flavored punch that can attract non-beer drinkers to the party or scintillate jaded taste buds tired of the same old same old. Plus, didn’t your doctor tell you need to consume more fruit?

Bière a la café mocha

There’s little in the way of flavors that a brewer can’t add to their beer these days. The seemingly endless variety of candy, fruit, and other flavors that you can find in Goses and pastry stouts proves the point. But sometimes the classics are still the best and when you have your fill of sour mango cheesecake, you can always find the warm hug of coffee and chocolate. 

These two exotic flavors, along with their somehow labeled “plain jane” cousin — vanilla — have been barn burner sensations since their introductions into Western cuisine. In beer, that truth still holds!

What Do We Want from Coffee and Chocolate?

This becomes one of those problems of, “how do you describe the color blue?” What do we want? Well, the flavors of coffee and chocolate. The flavors of dark bite-y roast with sweet berries and cherries, earthy and leathery tones. 

Because you’re adding these flavors to a large batch of other flavors, you want to make sure you’re adding potent punches of coffee or chocolate (or both). This is not a time for subtlety. We’d also suggest you avoid getting spendy with your ingredients. Invest in good quality, but don’t go overboard with your expense. (Save the really expensive stuff for separate enjoyment.)

Form Factors

As with any fundamental foodstuff, there are endless form factors available to us and each choice impacts the flavors that you’ll get.

Coffee Forms

Whole beans

Coffee in its purest form and easy to use. We recommend using them like you would dry hops. One of Drew’s favorite applications is from his friend, Kevin Baranowski, who serves a sweet stout on draft through a Randall with whole-bean for an intense last-minute hit of coffee.

Grounds

Mostly used in the kettle or to make brew for additions — Drew finds that if you add the grounds to the kettle, they’re best added off the boil as a whirlpool addition to avoid extracting additional bitterness.

Instant

Added to the fermenter, a decent quality powdered coffee provides a quick jolt with minimum fuss.

Brewed/espresso

Drew’s favorite way of adding coffee flavor is to use a strong brewed coffee. (Drew uses cold brew coffee concentrate as a way of adding potent flavor without adding a ton of water.) 

Chocolate Forms

Cacao nibs

The root of chocolate, little nuggets of fermented, but unprocessed cacao beans. You can buy them raw or roasted. They provide more of the deep earthy flavors.

Cocoa powder

The intense essence of chocolate, but a real pain to incorporate outside of the kettle. Neither of us are generally a fan of cocoa powder, both for its difficulty to dissolve in beer and in flavor prediction.

Solid chocolate

The final product of an amazing amount of work by chocolatiers. Because the cocoa butter is incorporated with the product, we’re generally not in favor of using this. (That includes baking chocolates like Baker’s German’s Baking Bars.) 

Liqueurs and Extracts

There are many different concentrated forms of coffee and chocolate flavors in these forms. Usually, we don’t favor extracts that we don’t make ourselves because we prefer to control the ingredients and Denny particularly objects to the heat of alcohol in many commercially purchased tinctures.

Having said that, many brewers find success with these products and they are an easy way to inject flavor to your beer by simply adding them to the finished beer. Beware of the added sugar content and what they can do with refermentation in the package. 

Some Things to Watch Out For

As with all ingredients, coffee and chocolate both carry negatives that we need to account for when using these components. The first is that both contain oils that can be detrimental to the foamy collar that we desire in our pints. Handling fresh coffee beans, the oils are clearly visible on the bean’s surface. And chocolate obviously contains an extraordinary amount of fat. 

We’ll cover how to deal with the fat in chocolate on later in this article and we usually don’t worry about the oil from coffee . . . it just is what it is.

Because you’re adding these flavors to a large batch of other flavors, you want to make sure you’re adding potent punches of coffee or chocolate (or both).

To us, the more important bit is remembering and adjusting for the bitterness and tannic bite that chocolate and coffee can impart. This is where tasting comes into play. With coffee, we’d recommend making a strong brew with your choice of coffee and blend it with a representative beer of the style you want to make (or one you’ve already made). 

Chocolate is tricky because the flavors are hard to predict until you actually add them. (We’ll address that in a moment as well), but if you use cacao nibs you must be aware that exposure time will change your flavors drastically. Chocolate contributes its positive flavors quickly without a need for long soak times.

The Best Way to Add Your Flavors

As we’ve stated many times over our columns here in BYO (and other writings), we’re generally fans of processes that give us both more flexibility and assurance of the final product. Generally, that means additions as late in the process as we can so we can adjust our additions to the flavor of the beer we produced and not the one we thought we were making. 

It’s important to know the structure of the beer that we’re flavoring so we can choose important characters and adjust flavoring amounts to the beer in the glass. Plus, doing it this way allows you more beer variety if you leave a beer half “plain” and half “flavored.”

So yes, the column is nominally about chocolate and coffee, but the reality is that whatever flavor you’re adding, use this as a guide! (This is a place where most professional brewers have a real advantage – they have more beer to play with and have more repeatable experiences with their beers and flavorings.)

Process for Tasting the Beer and Flavoring

If you’re doing a post-fermentation addition (i.e., adding it for bottling or kegging), we recommend this process to fine-tune the amount to add:

– Pour a measured sample of the beer into a glass (example, a 12 oz./355 mL pour of stout).

– Measure a small amount of your flavoring (example, ¼ oz./7 mL of extract).

– Mix the flavoring into the beer and evaluate. Assess where you’re at on the spectrum. Do you need more? Do you need less? Right in the Goldilocks zone? 

– Make another adjusted sample, if needed. (We usually only need the one and adjust from there.)

– Determine the amount of beer to be flavored. Say you have 4.5 gallons (17 L) remaining after racking off the yeast. That’s 576 oz. (17,000 mL) or 48 of your example 12-oz. (355-mL) glasses. If your ¼ oz. (7 mL) was on the money, that means you need to add 12 oz. (355 mL) of your flavor to the beer to recreate the experience. 

– Add the flavor to the bottling bucket or keg and make sure it gets evenly mixed into solution. 

Chocolate Tips

When it comes to chocolate, Drew really prefers to use cacao nibs as they’re less processed and more complex without added sugars and a manageable fat content. (And these days you can find nibs in just about any good grocery store — which you couldn’t say 10 years ago.) 

There are two primary ways to use the nibs. You can treat them like dry hops and add them directly to the secondary or keg, or brewers can create a tincture/extract with them. If you plan to add them like a dry hop, a hop bag is recommended to contain the nibs. Keep an eye on this though — too much time and the beer will begin to extract tannic/astringent character from the nibs. Unless you like that mouth-puckering drying sensation, we recommend checking the beer around day four of aging and removing the nibs from the beer when you get the flavor you want. 

Drew accidentally left a beer with nibs in a keg for two or so weeks once. The chocolate porter was so puckeringly astringent that it was rendered undrinkable. Not one to waste a beer — Drew added a full bottle of Razzmatazz liqueur to the keg, gave it a shake and the beer settled into a wonderfully balanced chocolate raspberry cordial porter. The keg was promptly drained at a party before the sugar got fermented.

If you want to use an extract, Drew tends to make his own to control the flavor and strip the fat. (He has a whole cabinet of various flavored tinctures that he makes for fun.) At the strength he normally makes, it takes about 3 oz. (90 mL) in a 5-gallon (19-L) batch to achieve a strong but not obnoxious chocolate presence. Here’s the recipe:

Coffee Tips

Coffee we’re not as strict about the whole “not in the kettle” thing, but it’s still generally a good guideline. Our favorite way is to simply brew up really strong coffee and use that in the beer. In general, the less heat the coffee sees during the extraction, the better. We’ve seen recipes where someone goes to a coffee shop, buys 12 shots of espresso and adds it to the kettle. The espresso is a good idea, but the kettle will be brutal to any of the less overt characters.

Drip coffee

It’s your standard joe, but for the purposes of beer making, it’s fairly weak and watery.

Espresso

Dark, roasty, and bitter. This is what you use when you want the coffee to read like “coffee!” and carry a bite. If you structure the beer to deal with any harshness, this can be the way to really drive home the coffee point. 

Cold brew coffee

Now available at your grocery store, coffee that never sees heat as part of the brewing process. The flavor is different, both more intense and more mellow, less acidic. Be aware in the store, you’ll often see “cold brew” coffee in a ready to drink format. For brewing purposes, Drew prefers to use (or make) a cold brew concentrate. (Use about 1:3 of coarse ground coffee-to-water and let it sit overnight before straining — so 1 cup of coffee bean grounds to 3 cups of cold, filtered water). 

If you want to brew with kettle coffee, Drew actually prefers adding about a cup of fresh grounds in the mash. You’ll get a coffee kick, but you’ll lose a lot of the nuance, but who needs nuance if you’re dropping coffee into your latest Russian imperial stout at 12.5% ABV?

Many years ago, when I began homebrewing and a quest to brew beers similar to those created in the Trappist tradition, one common thread that became apparent the more I read about these renowned styles was their inclusion of Belgian candi sugar. For a long time, this was only spoken about in the depths of homebrew clubs. The thought of using additional sugar, outside of what is brought to us by our grain, was seen by much of the larger craft beer-loving public as taboo. It was too closely related to the way that mass-produced lagers are made. A cheat code of sorts. 

The reality was that for centuries brewers had gone beyond relying solely on malt to create beer full of flavor, using various sugars to increase the original gravity in order to achieve exactly the beer that they were setting out to create. Malt is very finicky. Every mash and resulting beer is a mix of an intricate process that requires for every step to be hit in the right stages. And they were able to fine-tune those stages; but malt was not as refined as we have now. So, the use of added sugar helped to create a beer exactly as the brewer intended. And that tradition continued. Even as malt improved, new styles emerged that could only exist with the use of brewing sugar, even if that use of sugar wasn’t widely discussed. 

The fun part is that brewing sugar isn’t taboo anymore; however, its many uses are misunderstood by many brewers and consumers. As brewers, sugars should be viewed as a tool to boost fermentables, lighten body, improve drinkability, and, at times, even build upon a beer’s flavor. In some cases, the impact to the flavor profile can be the primary reason we add sugar and the increase in gravity is secondary, yet must still be accounted for.

How and why to use sugar in your brewing is the basis of this article. 

Brewing Sugar and Why we Use It

Brewing sugar and its entire existence is linked back to European brewing culture. The primary source for brewing with sugar that many of us brewers use as guidance is Belgian Trappist brewing. The use of candi sugar and syrups has been used for nearly a century by Belgian Trappist brewers. Where the modern American brewing culture really came into existence is with the advent of what we now call American light lager. How do you make a beer dry and flavorful? Rice and corn were the answer. Corn gave us the so-called why. It is widely available and gave a great mouthfeel to the direction of beer during the 1960s and 70s. The how was rice, which is a starch that can be converted to sugar. Though both were widely available and used pre-Prohibition; it wasn’t until the macro-lager movement of the time that they took such a prevalent place in brewers’ minds around the world as the style of light lager spread from continent to continent. Adjuncts were (and still are) used to dilute the high protein content of North American barley. Breeding programs have greatly improved today’s barley, but the original reasons for adjunct use relate to improving beer flavor and colloidal stability.

As American craft beer culture continued to gain traction during the 90s, brewers began to use various sugars in their beer to recreate classic styles, particularly those of Belgian influence. You can look at the likes of Steven Pauwels (Boulevard Brewing) and Tomme Arthur (Pizza Port/Port Brewing/The Lost Abbey) for helping to start the craze for brewing sugars in and around the late 90s. For more modern craft brewing styles, it wasn’t until a little article that the legendary Russian River Owner/Brewmaster Vinnie Cilurzo wrote explaining how to make double IPA that our world of brewing sugars was changed. That corn sugar, dextrose, was being used to make an IPA that was upwards of 8% ABV yet drying out and coming to a final gravity that was recognized as normal was eye-opening to many brewers entering the craft brewing scene at the time. Sugar was being used to build ABV and character into the beer. The sheer dryness from the sugar was the character. Crisp, clean, and hoppy, the beers created by Russian River helped push the stigma of using brewing sugars in beer out of brewers’ minds and into a place
of acceptance. Brewing sugars have now become so ingrained into the culture that there is no taboo talk.

Most sugars should be added on the hot side for the fear of refermentation after the beer is finished. There are a couple that we can also give life to as a tertiary sugar; ones that finish the beer with flavor, add a residual sweetness that rounds out the beer, and generally brings the beer back to the original concept. 

So let’s now dig into some of the most recognized sugars being used today and the best way to utilize them in your homebrews. 

Types of Brewing Sugar and Their Use

Belgian Candi Sugar

Used extensively by the Trappist brewers of Belgium; candi sugar is generally made from beet sugar (sucrose) that is heated and cooled repeatedly to different depths of color and flavor. 

It is available in rock or syrup form from a range of light to dark. The light will add nearly no color and a very minimal flavor component to your beers. Amber and brown candi sugar adds notes of mild dark fruit and some molasses character while adding some color to a beer. Dark candi sugar will add deep molasses, raisin, and chocolate character to a beer. It will also add a large amount of color. 

The range of light to dark (whether rock or syrup) will also have an impact on fermentation character. The lighter versions of candi sugar help dry out the beers they are used in. As you progress to the amber and dark versions you see much less drying out from the sugar; yet a significant flavor component on top of the added color. Using amber and dark candi sugar is one of my favorite additions to imperial-strength beers, but also needs to be tempered to allow for a proper fermentation. Used properly and in the right proportions — Belgian influenced or not — you can make use of it to create beautiful beers of nearly
any style. 

Corn Sugar

Commonly known as dextrose, corn sugar has arguably become the most used sugar in brewing. Being 100% fermentable to brewer’s yeast, corn sugar adds original gravity to your wort while providing a stable fermentation profile and no flavor. 

Corn sugar can fit into nearly every style of beer that you want to boost the ABV and finish drier, but has found its place in the world of IPAs, and more specifically double/imperial IPA. With its fermentability, a brewer is able to build a solid and soft malt backbone, while using dextrose to grow the gravity to a level that helps balance the alcohol and the malt presence, and really letting the hops shine. As you want to make hoppy beer that traverses the 7.5% ABV range, look at dextrose as an addition to your malt/sugar bill. Generally, shoot for 6–7% when used in your brews and look for a 1–2 °P (4–8 gravity points) pick-up from an addition that size. If you want to head to the very big IPA (9%+) don’t shy away from increasing the corn sugar to make up 10–12% of fermentables. As with all big beers, make sure you factor in extra yeast, yeast nutrient, and oxygen. But at the end of the day, done right, brewer’s yeast will eat through all sugar that dextrose throws at it.

Rice Syrup Solids

Escaping the light lager was why so many of us decided to embrace craft beer and homebrewing, but after enough time spent drinking IPAs and big, rich beers, many find their way back to seeking out these lighter beers. The hardest part about using rice is that you need to cook the rice to extract the sugars that are produced. On a home scale, utilizing a rice cooker can make that happen; but you also have the option of rice syrup solids. You can achieve the flavor, character, and dryness without the added step of cooking the rice. It brings a light flavor and a great fermentation profile finishing dry and crisp in nearly every beer that you choose to use it in. 

Rice syrup solids can easily be subbed for malt as it will yield nearly the same gravity increase and fermentable sugar, while providing a solid rice character. I’ve had great success subbing up to 10% in a crushable lager. Perfect for drying out lager, but also a great experiment for your next imperial beer. 

Brewers Crystals

Very similar to dextrose as it is presented, but brewers crystals do not follow through in the same way during fermentation. They definitely add sugar to the original gravity (OG) in a similar way as dextrose; however, they are specialty corn sugars with a controlled enzymatic breakdown that does not allow them to fully ferment out and thus finish much higher in the final gravity (FG) after fermentation. If you are looking to dry out the body of a beer, this is not your sugar of choice. However, it has its place. 

The primary benefit of using brewers crystals in a recipe is to increase the original gravity and ABV while keeping mouthfeel and body in play. Mouthfeel and body (vs. a drier beer with many other sugars discussed) is the tradeoff when all of the sugar is not fermented out. Brewers crystals really allow a brewer to experiment with malt character and alcohol while minding the way both interplay. A balance of sorts, especially as a homebrewer. 

 Brewers crystals should be considered when formulating a recipe for any beer that you’d like to finish higher in gravity. Think of a mid-range alcohol beer where you don’t want to add milk sugar (lactose). Stout and porter as well as hazy IPAs are all candidates that may benefit from brewers crystals. 

Maple Syrup

One of the best and worst sugars to work with is maple syrup. I say it’s one of the best because of the amazing flavor maple can add to beer styles from stouts and porters to golden ales, and many in between. It’s one of the worst because keeping that flavor around by the time the beer is through fermenting and ready to drink is easier said than done.

We always try to source from organic farmers. The farmer and the trees and the year dictate what we receive. There is no doubt that the flavor is amazing every year, but accurately measuring the sugar content upon arrival is harder; and sometimes you just have to roll the dice. 

When using maple syrup, using it in the 10–12% range of total sugar for any brew works great. The biggest problem that has been seen with maple syrup is the loss of flavor through fermentation. As fermentation happens, sometimes the intricate flavors of your ingredients can get blown off in the process. Maple is very susceptible to this. With that in mind, plan to add a bit more syrup on the back end after fermentation completes. The character builds back and really helps the final iteration of your creation stand out. You will always need to watch out for refermentation when using maple syrup on the back end of the beer you create. To limit refermentation, the suggestion would be to cold crash your beer. Once crashed, transfer off the yeast cake and onto the maple syrup. Keep cold at all times once you package, and kegging (or canning) is the safer route to avoid any possibility of exploding glass bottles.

Honey

Honey is similar in many ways to maple syrup, but to its advantage the character honey imparts holds up better through fermentation. Your provider is one of the most important parts of the ingredient. Seek out honey from local or trusted producers that care about what is being created. 

When honey is added has a huge impact on what it carries over to the finished beer. Using honey early in the boil will kill the character of the honey. Transferring your honey additions to late in the boil or the whirlpool will help to keep the character of your chosen honey. Adding honey half way through your fermentation can also produce astounding results with flavor and aroma, while giving you peace of mind that you won’t need to worry about refermentation. It’s a “sticky” situation, but I would highly recommend it for maximum flavor and aroma additions to your beer. 

The most unique part about honey is the impact from the flowers that our bee friends pollinate from. Your finished beer will have the flavor and taste of the flower honey that you choose. We’ve extensively used both wildflower and Mexican coffee honey at Oakshire Brewing (Eugene, Oregon) and both smell and taste exactly as they are described. Think of a flower’s aroma that may complement a beer’s flavor, then find a honey to match or build your wort composition around that flavor. 

Other Sugars

There are so many other sugars that a brewer can talk about. We are always seeking and trying to create. For that reason, we view ingredients as our step to progress. Don’t leave out molasses, turbinado sugar, or even fruit as an important source of sugar used to create beer. Sugars are all viable to us as brewers and finding the best way to use them is our way forward. 

Beer and Sugar

Beer and sugars in a way is our next step. Our predecessors in the brewing industry decided to introduce sugars into the process and modern brewers have continued to run with it. Now we sit at the point where we get to decide what that next step is, and what the next sugar is that we can use to make the next great beer. That for everyone should be the next thought and challenge. I know it is for me.

Phantoms! Eerie tales of suspense . . . No not those, we’re talking Phantasm powder and how to brew with it! 

My first recollection of this new mysterious brewing ingredient was a few years ago when I was a commercial brewer. I was out enjoying a beer with several other local brewers when the topic of recipe development came up. One asked the group, “have you played with Phantasm yet!?” Not knowing about it, I assumed it was a new branded hop extract similar to Incognito or something since our conversation was centered around whirlpool hop additions at that time. To my surprise, I learned through the flow of conversation that it’s actually an extraction from New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc grapes that are rich in thiol precursors. 

Without going down a Douglas Adams-esque rabbit hole on thiols, they’re an organosulfur compound that contains a sulfhydryl group along with more than one organic functional group, for example 3-sulfanyl-1-hexanol (3SH). Depending on the specific thiol’s makeup, it can smell like anything from citrus to garlic and even roasted coffee. In layman’s terms, thiols are like a periodic table of aromas! I’ll refer you to the story Are Thiols Worth the Hype” for more on the subject of thiols. But it is important to understand what they are in order to understand what Phantasm is and how to brew with it.

So What is Phantasm?

Let’s dig into Phantasm’s backstory, because it truly does embody the spirit of brewing your own. You can’t talk about Phantasm without referencing its creator, Jos Ruffell. He is the Co-Founder of an amazing brewery in New Zealand called Garage Project. It was through his love for brewing and learning about hops that this innovative new ingredient was born. If you love hoppy beer, chances are you probably are familiar with and have enjoyed some of the hop varieties coming out of New Zealand. The aromas on hops like Nelson Sauvin^TM, Motueka^TM, Riwaka^TM, etc. have big, bold exotic fruit characters that you just don’t find with hops grown north of the equator. Call it climate, or soil, or terroir — they are just different and in a really good way. 

Jos learned these hops are high in thiols, specifically one called 3SH (remember that example earlier?). This thiol precursor when metabolized (biotransformation) by yeast produces passion fruit and guava aromas. Specific yeast strains do this better than others, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves yet. Back to Jos and his musings down under. New Zealand is also a renowned wine-producing region. In fact, most of thiol research as it pertains to the wine industry is coming out of New Zealand and is centered around Sauvignon Blanc grapes grown in the Marlborough region. These grapes are also very high in the specific thiol 3SH. It was through this understanding of similarities that Jos became inspired to explore how these grapes might be utilized in the brewing process. 

Brewers, especially those making sour beers, have long used pressed grape skins and lees (primarily dead yeast cells, similar to trub in brewing) to impart flavor and aroma in beer. But neither of these methods offer particularly shelf-stable products, nor was the chemistry understood as fully as it is today. Through trial and research, Jos created a process in which he was able to extract high concentrations of these thiol precursor compounds from Marlborough’s expressive Sauvignon Blanc grapes to create a preserved product capable of being sold commercially. It was around late-2020 when Phantasm first hit the market and by mid-2021 everyone was talking about it and the beers produced using it. 

Putting Phantasm to Use

It was around this same time that I and the other local brewers were having that conversation about using it. Lucky for me I had also been working with a local commercial yeast company called Berkeley Labs that had been doing some amazing things with genetically modified yeast. I had primarily been using their Galactic strain, a Saccharomyces strain that produces both lactic acid and alcohol. Long story short, it was through this relationship that they asked me if I wanted to try another new strain that was currently in development. After signing some NDAs to not share it, etc. I got my hands on one of the keys to unlocking Phantasm’s highest potential. It essentially was a strain that would go on to be known as thiolized yeast. Fast forward to today’s brewing world, a few different companies are offering thiolized yeasts that are either selected and bred up using traditional methods or genetically modified to greatly increase the given strain’s ability to unlock thiol precursors. 

That leads us into using Phantasm powder in brewing. I’ve brewed several batches using Phantasm now, both large and small, and describe it as a player in the symphony that is your beer. We know the musical notes the instrument produces (guava and passion fruit aroma). As the conductor (brewer) the choice is yours to either seat it in the back or up front and even amplify it if you choose to do so. In my brewing experience with it and in talking with Jos (more on that in a minute) the best place to use it is with your whirlpool additions or as a biotransformation hop addition; i.e., when you pitch yeast or within the first 24–48 hours of fermentation. Remember the key to unlocking thiol precursors is through that biological bag of enzymes that we call yeast (biotransformation). 

Back to the symphony analogy, the amount (0.5–1 oz. per gallon/ 3.7–7.5 g/L) represents how many players of that instrument are present in your orchestra. The choice of a yeast strain is its placement, either in the front or the back. Some yeast strains are high and some low in their ability to produce thoils. Then you have your genetically modified strains that are essentially amplifiers for that instrument section. Let’s not forget the other players, like malt and hops. They too not only contribute other flavors and aromas to the symphony (beer) but they also have their own thiol precursors as well. Having experimented with Phantasm quite a bit, when used with thiolized yeast and prior to any dry hopping, you would swear the beer had guava and passion fruit in it from the aroma. Then when used with something like the Chico strain, the aroma is more subtle. So it really all depends on what you’re going for and trying to brew. To be clear, we’re talking aroma here, not taste. If you want a big fruit bomb aroma go on the high end of the recommended dosage amount and use a thiolized yeast. The recipe is a guideline, your sheet of music to create, and you’re the maestro!

I mentioned earlier talking to Jos about recommended usage. Not only was he super open and bounced me several emails about Phantasm, so was someone else he brought into the email thread, Jean-Claude Tetreault, Co-Founder and Brewer of Trillium Brewing. Trillium, of course, is renowned for their hazy IPAs coming out of Canton, Massachusetts, and their other locations around the state, some of which use Phantasm to boost the tropical character. Not only that, Jean-Claude was also a judge in the first annual Phantasm Cup held last December at Half Acre Beer Co., in which more than 75 breweries entered beers that used Phantasm. Jean-Claude even supplied me with their recipe for Dialed-Out — a double IPA brewed with Sauvignon Blanc grape juice, Phantasm, and hopped with Citra^®, Nelson Sauvin^TM, and Rakau^TM. That clone recipe is below. I’m also sharing one of my commercial recipes below that uses Phantasm called Me or the Grapes. It’s a beer I brewed with grapes as well, which I had the pleasure of picking from a local winery in Brentwood, California. Either of these recipes can be brewed with or without the grape juice, but both are inspired by this innovative product and its roots on the vine, Phantasm. 

A staple in many Belgian and English beer styles, sugar syrups provide key characteristics to several of them. Learning when and how to use them to your advantage as well as the various techniques to produce them can help you achieve new heights in many of your recipes. 

So what are sugar syrups and why are they beneficial? Well first off, as the name implies, they’re a solution of sugar and water. Sometimes additives are included to raise or drop the pH, which is meant to affect key chemical processes while cooking the syrup. Others may add something like dried malt extract to allow some melanoidin reactions to take place as well. The best thing to do is to read up on others’ experiences creating their own versions, then buying a big bag of sugar (corn or table sugar) and start experimenting on your own. 

So what are the benefits of using sugar syrup versus just dumping sugar in straight from the bag? The main goal of using darker syrups is to gain color and flavor characteristics due largely to caramelization reactions that take place during the cooking process. In the brewing process we mainly talk about Maillard reactions and their melanoidin products. Melanoidins can give us baked bread, toasted nuts, and even coffee characteristics. Caramelization products can provide more of a dried dark fruit and caramel . . . well-fitted for a Belgian dubbel or English mild. 

Another benefit may be found in the yeast’s ability to more easily ferment syrup that has been cooked compared to unaltered table sugar. That is because table sugar is comprised of sucrose, which yeast need to break down into its components, fructose and glucose, before yeast can ferment it. When sugar is heated into a syrup, sucrose will naturally start this hydrolysis process of splitting, something we call inverting the sugar. Inverting sugar also means that the sugar will not easily recrystallize after cooling. 

Timing Your Syrup Addition

You can add the syrup in either the boil or the fermenter. When brewing lower gravity beer, I generally advise adding the syrup directly to the boil kettle. It’s easy, it assures it will be sterile, and it gives yeast simple sugars to work with to begin fermentation. But when brewing bigger beers like a Belgian quad or a barleywine, then I will hold off on adding it until I notice peak fermentation has passed. Too much sugar in solution at the beginning of fermentation can cause problems for yeast. So sugar is best fed to them to minimize this osmotic shock.

Making Simple Syrup

The most basic form of sugar syrup is to make simple syrup. This would be clear in color and best utilized in those Belgian golden ales, saisons, or West Coast IPAs. To make one is fairly simple; you are adding anywhere from 4 parts sugar to 1 part water all the way up to 2 parts sugar to 1 part water. You may want to add a little acid here to help speed up the acid hydrolysis reaction that will invert the sugar, maybe a squirt of lemon juice or a bit of acid blend. Add heat to dissolve the sugar in the liquid and to sterilize the solution. I usually just bring it up to a boil and then turn off the heat. Make sure to filter your water or use distilled water if there are any chlorine compounds in your tap water. 

Making Darker Syrups

Making darker syrups are going to be more involved. You may also consider utilizing a few more ingredients and I highly recommend that it be performed using either a candy thermometer or other way to gauge temperature up to about 350 °F (180 °C). The fact is there are many ways to get good results. You can simply try using sugar and water. Some folks will add a nitrogen source in order to increase Maillard products. People will often look to increase or decrease pH depending on their goal. These variations are dependent on the characteristics you are after in your final product. 

In order to produce what I am after in, say, a Belgian dubbel, I use the following: Starting with 1 kg (2.2 lbs.) sugar add just over one cup (250 mL) of water and stir over medium-low heat until a slurry is achieved. Bring to a boil, stirring, but be careful of spatter. I highly recommend using silicone or brewer’s gloves when performing this task as well as some form of eye protection. Add ½ tsp. of DAP (diammonium phosphate), available at any homebrew shop, and stir to mix in. Insert thermometer and continue heating over medium to medium-low heat until the temperature rises to roughly 290 °F (143 °C), then remove from heat and add about 12 oz. (350 mL) of water. Once again, take care of spatter from the pot, as the superheated solution will try to quickly boil off the liquid. 

I like to perform this task just prior to cooling and adding direct to either the kettle or fermenter. Typically, I have used just common cane sugar, but feel free to experiment with other types of sugar like a raw, jaggery, demerara, or panela sugar if a little molasses character might be beneficial. Finally, I highly recommend checking out the following blog post: https://ryanbrews.blogspot.com/2012/02/candy-syrup-right-way-hint-weve-been.html

It explores some alternative methods and ingredients. Again, there is no right way . . . just better ways. 

Lactose contributes creaminess and boosts the body of beer, as well as adding a perceptible sweetness in higher amounts that is desirable in some recipes. Learn how three pros put this unfermentable sugar to use in their brews.

Chris Davison is the Head Brewer at Wolf’s Ridge Brewing in Columbus, Ohio

We typically only add lactose to some stouts with regularity, however, we have added it for various reasons to several other styles that are brewed less often. We’ve done one or two milkshake IPAs, and years back I used to add lactose to our imperial red ale in an effort to mimic the character of Three Floyds’ Apocalypse Cow. We’ve also added lactose to an imperial cream ale we do called All the Breakfast. Lactose can be used in a range of styles, but I hate beer that is cloying and lacking in balance, and any style can be thrown out of whack with an over-usage of lactose.

How lactose is used can differ depending on the base style and what you’re after. For milk stout it’s as much about keeping the beer on-style and true-to-form as it is for the flavor impact. Depending on the usage rate, lactose can add a slight creaminess and smoothness to the mouthfeel, while increased quantities can also lend perceptible sweetness. We are usually aiming to hit the creamy mouthfeel without making the sweetness of our beers overbearing. Also, if you use too much it’s possible for the beer to take on an unwanted tartness as well. We will use 50–100 lbs. (23–45 kg) in a 15-bbl batch. Much more and you begin to see significant sweetness, increasing as the usage rate goes up.

I don’t think usage and efficiencies are linear, but using our ratios, homebrewers could use 0.5–1 lb. for a 5-gallon (0.23–0.45 kg/19L) batch for a beer that exhibits a nice mouthfeel and mild increase in body without being significantly sweeter. I imagine you could use 1.5–2 lbs. (0.7–0.9 kg) before entering the “too sweet” realm.

We add most sugars, including lactose, to our beer near the end of the boil or in the whirlpool. As with anything in brewing, the more heat or time boiling a product, the more you’re going to affect the flavor or chemical composition of that product. If I want some caramelization to happen with candi sugar I may boil it much longer, but for lactose I just want to add it hot so it’s sanitary/pasteurized, but avoid the risk of caramelization. 

We don’t make any dramatic changes to recipes based solely on the addition of lactose. On the malt side, you just need to account for the anticipated sweetness or body impact from the lactose. You may wish to alter the amount of crystal malt or mash temperature to compensate things to achieve the flavor and balance you desire. The unfermentable sugars of the lactose add body and will increase your original gravity, and subsequently the final gravity, above where you’d see the same beer without lactose. Make sure you’re accounting for this in your recipes or it can be easy to anticipate a higher alcohol content or lighter body than you’ll actually wind up with.

There are options to get similar effects of lactose without actually using lactose. If the main reason for using it is to impart body, mouthfeel, and sweetness in your beer, this can be achieved to varying degrees with the addition of things like flaked oats, using higher mash temperatures, and working with dextrin malt or maltodextrin. The only beer I think you can’t substitute out the lactose without altering what you call it would be milk stout. But sub in maltodextrin and call it a “sweet stout” and you’re golden.

Paul Schneider is Head Brewer and Partner of Cinderlands Beer Co. in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

We have used lactose in a range of styles and found that we really like it in two places in our range of beers; we especially find that it plays a nice counterpoint to the acid of a gently kettle-soured beer and it lifts the roast and chocolate character of a really big imperial stout. Lactose gives a really luscious, creamy mouthfeel without adding a ton of sweetness. To my taste, it definitely does not add a “sweetness” in the way that some claim, but it’s really a unique character that sticks out like a sore thumb if not used judiciously. 

We’ve found that for many styles there is a better option for adding depth, body, texture, or creaminess than lactose. We really didn’t care for what lactose did in hazy IPAs or barrel-aged imperial stouts. I know some people like a subtle lactose addition in hazy IPA, but we’ve found that oats, wheat, yeast strain, water profile, and mash regimen are all we need to get the mouthfeel to the level that we want. In barrel-aged stout, we found that getting all of the extract from malt provided a more viscous mouthfeel and intense flavor than using lactose.

As an ingredient, lactose needs to be built into the recipe with consideration for every other ingredient. Every beer we make is delicate, though in these cases intense, so we are always thinking about the arrangement and balance of components. Lactose has to find balance with other components too. We have gone to the extreme of 10 lbs. per barrel (about 5 oz./gallon or 37 g/L) on the high end for lactose additions. The effect at this high of an addition rate is VERY pronounced up there, as is the calorie count! This is a more common addition rate for our imperial stouts and our Tartshake fruited sours. On the low end we’ve tried as little as 3 lbs. per barrel (about 1.5 oz./gallon or 11 g/L), but we don’t find a lot of benefit at that rate for the two styles we like lactose in. We always add lactose in the last five minutes of the boil, though you could add it earlier. 

My advice for homebrewers experimenting with lactose and new styles, methods, and ingredients is to try a lot of different things! Play around with usage rates and building texture, body, and flavor around it. Make sure you understand the differences between the end results and difference between a dextrin-promoting mash, flaked oats, malted oats, wheat, spelt, low-attenuating yeast, and lactose. Figure out which of those pieces should be part of your directed effort to fluff up your body and mouthfeel.

Garrett Hickey is the Managing Brewer and Owner of Streetside Brewery in Cincinnati, Ohio

We brew a lot of milkshake IPAs at Streetside Brewery. We are mostly using lactose to add sweetness to this style; it is frequently used to add body, but that’s not our goal here. I’ve found that we get better results by mashing hotter and using different grains if adding body is the only goal when brewing this style. We’ve also added lactose to milk stouts (obviously), as well as brown ales and blondes to give a little sweetness and add body as well. 

All of our lactose additions are done in the boil. The addition rate depends on the style, but it is generally 6–12 lbs. per barrel (3–6 oz. per gallon or 22–45 g/L). For milkshake IPAs we aim for the higher end of that scale. The lactose addition doesn’t play a role in yeast or base ingredient selection for us, but we do consider the impact of it on our fruit selection for fruited milkshake IPAs. We definitely try to use fruit that plays well with the sweetness — orange or tangerine with lactose makes for creamsicle flavors, and strawberry pairs great too. We always think in terms of desserts for this style — it’s easier to work within a pre-existing idea. For instance, a milkshake IPA hopped with Belma® and Citra® and fruited with strawberry is a recipe for success.

If you want to try to replicate lactose additions but keep your beer lactose-free, my best advice would be to mash hotter and/or use maltodextrin, which may get you in the ballpark. 

While some traditionalists scoff at the idea of adding anything other than malt, hops, yeast, and water to their beer, nothing is more traditional than adding spices other than hops to beer. Gruit is much older than the ales and lagers we drink today. And when things go right and a recipe comes together seamlessly, marrying the beer and spice perfectly, it can lead to memorable drinking experiences. But when poorly made, spiced beer can be heartbreaking . . . trust me, I know from experience. 

Getting A Game Plan

Executing a well-made spiced beer all starts in the recipe development stage. If attempting something new, it’s nice to have a tested recipe already developed for you. Visit byo.com/recipes to explore a huge array of previously tested recipes. You can find inspiration for a beer or find quantities for spicing that you may want to incorporate into your recipe. There is an endless array of possible combinations, but a common theme is to look to the culinary world for inspiration. Dessert-themed beers have become common style in both the commercial and homebrew scenes, but there are so many other possibilities too. 

If you are looking to create a recipe on your own, there are a couple concepts that can help get you on a road to a successful beer. First off, if you are doing a concept beer based on something from the culinary world like a dessert, I would recommend that you forgo directly adding the finished product to the beer but rather deconstruct the ingredients and add those in place. So instead of adding a dozen jelly donuts or two boxes of Thin Mints® to the fermenter, look at the ingredients used and pick out the key flavors and ingredients you may want to incorporate into beer. For that jelly donut beer, maybe you’ll want to get some strawberry puree and/or extract to get the jelly aspect to pop. Maybe you’ll want to add some melanoidin and/or aromatic malt to the mash to get a little toasted character to the beer. For the Thin Mints® beer, you’ll want some peppermint (leaves or extract) along with some chocolate element — chocolate malts, cocoa powder, and cocoa nibs. Both would probably benefit from a little vanilla addition as well, either chopped beans or vanilla extract.

Honing In The Details

Next up, it’s important to match up the base beer with the spicing. It may be pretty easy for certain concept beers but can be more of a challenge when exploring further reaches of the culinary world. A death by chocolate cake concept is most likely to be matched to a big, chewy stout and that winter warmer will probably get a nutty amber or brown ale to go with it. But that candy cap mushroom beer may be a little more difficult to pin down.

When it comes to how much of each element you should add, I like some advice that Josh Weikert gave in a story he wrote for the January-February 2019 issue on the topic. Weikert suggests to start with the quantity of spice you may add to a common 6-serving meal. So let’s say you want to make a mole sauce-inspired beer. When trying to come up with quantities of each spice to add, check out a recipe for making mole sauce for a family. Those are ballpark amounts you should consider to incorporate into your 5-gallon (19-L) beer recipe.

Here is some advice I’ve learned through a few failures of my own. For the most part, stay away from the onion family (garlic, shallots, chives, leeks, etc.). They may go great in that culinary dish, but I’ve never found success using them in beer. One idea that may work is to put them through a caramelization step. It would give them a sweeter and more rounded flavor. Cloves are a spice I tend to stay away from as it is very easy to overdo it. If you want clove flavors, I suggest using a phenolic off-flavor positive (POF+) yeast strain. You also want to stay away from fatty things as it can ruin the head retention on beer. For example, PB2 powder is a great substitute for peanut butter. PB2 contains 1.5 g of fats per 2 Tbsp. compared to 16 g of fats per 2 Tbsp. of peanut butter.

Timing is Everything

Finally, I want to spend some time talking about when spices should be added. Almost all my spice additions are made after fermentation is complete. But what about sanitation issues? I deal with that by giving my spices a long soak in vodka, which technically makes them a tincture. How long of a soak depends upon the spice I’m using. Vanilla and cocoa nibs are two tinctures that I always keep in my kitchen. But generally I’ll start my tinctures 1–2 weeks prior to brew day. 

There are some exceptions that may make you adjust the spice addition to the boil. Cinnamon is one spice that will have a different flavor when added to hot liquids versus cold liquids. Cocoa powder is often “bloomed” (added to hot liquids) in order to draw out its rich flavors. Thyme and rosemary are two herbs that may be considered for addition on the hot side. One benefit to any spices added to hot wort above 175 °F (80 °C) is that they will not need to be previously sanitized. 

At its core, beer really only needs three ingredients: Water, malt, and yeast. Hops were added later as a preservative and flavoring to beer, but many other ingredients were used to add flavor prior to hops. Certain fruit, such as grapes, were very commonly added to wort as a supplement in some cultures. Fruit can typically bring acidity, flavor, and some texture to beer. It’s no surprise then that fruit and beer are a match that can really stand out in a crowd. But there are certain pitfalls brewers can fall into that can doom a beer. Let’s take a spin through some basics of crafting a fruit beer.

Matching Beer with Fruit

The first and most important part of crafting a good fruit beer is to properly pair the base beer with the fruit. More delicate fruit should not be hidden by powerful roasted malt or other competing components. While chocolate-dipped strawberries may be delicious, strawberry flavors are quite mild and will easily be lost in stout. Sour beers, such as Berliner weisse or Gose, have recently become almost the default base for fruit beers. There is a very good reason for this as their acidity and non-confrontational flavors can really make the fruit aromas and flavors pop. Milkshake IPAs and pastry stouts are another more recent niche set of fruited beers.

Tropical fruits such as guava, passion fruit, and mango are often matched up with either lightly sour or fruity IPA base beers to produce beer with almost a cocktail- or dessert-like array of flavors. Berry fruits like blueberries and raspberries can also make a big impact with sour-style ales, but can also stand up nicely to beers such as blonde and amber ales. There is also a whole world of marrying grapes and beer as well. These hybrid beer-wine matches carry an amazing array of possibilities. Another notable fruit class is the stone fruits such as plum, cherry, and apricot. These fruits can be more expressive in their character and can stand up to some malt-forward beers.

A final nod goes to the pairing of citrus fruits with hop-forward beers. While tropical fruit can also pair well with New World hops with similar characteristics, matching citrus like grapefruit, orange, lemon, or lime with fruity hops like Centennial, Amarillo®, or Cascade can lift a beer’s profile. Using the zest or peels from citrus fruit is the most common, although some brewers will add the juice too. You just need to be careful with these additions as the acidity can overpower the beer easily.

Types of Fruit Additions

There are several different ways to approach adding fruit flavors. First is using fresh or frozen fruit. Even if you buy fresh fruit, many sources will advise you to freeze the fruit prior to adding it to beer. There are several sanitation steps you can take such as steaming the fruit, spraying the fruit with a metabisulfite solution (dissolved Campden tablets), or a spray or soak in cheap vodka. But if you are going to be drinking the beer fairly young, contamination should not be an issue. Also, try to make sure the fruit is submerged in the beer. Fruit floating on the surface can greatly encourage microbes to grow on them. They are safer in the harsher environment submerged in the beer.

Fruit floating on the surface can greatly encourage microbes to grow on them.

Buying aseptic juice (think not-from-concentrate orange juice) or big cans of fruit are two other available options. These juices are already pasteurized so you don’t need to sanitize and are often in a puree form. Fruits can also come in concentrated form, as extracts, or as natural flavorings. These can be especially helpful if you already added fresh fruit but didn’t get as much flavor as you desired. You can boost that character with an extract or flavoring.

Gravity Considerations

I will not go too deep down this rabbit hole as Mick Spencer wrote a great article on this topic in the BYO May-June 2021 issue titled, “Ciphering Fruit Beers.” But to paraphrase, and counter to most inclinations, most fruit additions will actually lower the potential alcohol content of your beer. The only exceptions may be in the case of low-alcohol beers like table beer as your base and/or in the case of using a very high sugar content fruit like grapes. Consider the case of raspberries, whose pulp’s gravity is a paltry 1.016. If you add 10 lbs. (4.5 kg) of raspberries to a beer, you are greatly watering the beer’s strength down. Wine grapes on the other hand may clock in over 1.100 . . . there is a reason grapes were so loved by many of our ancestors . . . that’s a lot more alcohol than raspberry wine.

Timing and Amounts

There is no right answer in this category, but generally fruit should be added after active fermentation has died down, possibly in secondary fermentation and off the yeast cake. This will allow the subtle fruit aromas a better chance of surviving into the final product. How much to add is highly dependent upon what you are after, either a subtle hint of fruit, or a big juicy-fruit blast. If using fresh or frozen fruit, a good starting point for many fruit types might be around 1 lb. per gallon (0.12 kg/L) of beer, but a big fruit bomb, 3–4 lbs. per gallon (0.36–0.48 kg/L) may be needed. But again, extracts and fruit flavors may be used as a supplement if the price tag and prep works seems daunting when looking to purchase 20 lbs. (9.1 kg) of mangos.

For a closer look at certain fruits and the characteristics along with recipes, please check out: https://byo.com/article/award-winning-fruit-beers/

I believe introductions are in order. I’m Alchemist John and I’m a maker, and I don’t consider it a problem.

I’ve been having a blast with fermentation for over three decades at this point. I have done all sorts of fermentations — beer, wine, sake, mead, bochet, and concoctions and elixirs that don’t quite fit into any category — like the smoked imperial elderberry braggot, or was that an imperial smoked stout with honey and elderberries, or was it an elderberry metheglin with smoked malt? See what I mean? 

I also founded a company called Chocolate Alchemy some 18 years ago in case you were wondering why I call myself Alchemist John. There we teach people how to make chocolate from cocoa beans (more on that later) and recently we have been supplying a lot of small, medium, and large breweries with cocoa nibs to add to their various chocolate beers.

All this is to say I’m no stranger to combining things and seeing what you get. Today we are going to dig in and dive deep into several ways you can get chocolate flavor into your brews — what works, what doesn’t, and why.

Personally, I find the why is very important and with that arrow in your proverbial quiver you can save yourself from going down a multitude of dead-end paths that are fraught with inherent issues. To that end, welcome to the lecture portion of our class.

Did you know chocolate is a fermented food? It is. Chocolate as we think of it has only been around a few hundred years but cocoa has been consumed for thousands of years in various forms. Now some of you are already saying I should have said cacao, but I didn’t on purpose as to my mind (and others will disagree, of course) they are the same thing and the only difference is language and given that languages evolve, a review of the origin of chocolate and cocoa and cacao are in order.

What’s in a Name?

So what is it? Cocoa? Cacao? Cacoa? The terminology can be a little confusing but it really doesn’t need to be. A lot of people try to be fancy and use cacao when referring to unprocessed cocoa and cocoa that comes after that. Others don’t call it cacao if it is raw. I mainly want to clarify this so you don’t think you have to pass on some cocoa nibs when they are labeled cacao nibs. For me, the terms go like this:

Cacao: Short for Theobroma cacao, the scientific name for the plant that we eventually get chocolate from. 

Cocoa: The English term for the seeds that come from Theobroma cacao. It also can refer to any product up to chocolate, usually with an adjective, e.g. cocoa bean, cocoa powder, cocoa nib. Cocoa on its own is frankly ambiguous, so let’s try not to use it. Similarly, lots of people like to say cacao nibs, which sounds a bit pompous and is incorrect unless of course your native tongue’s word for cocoa is cacao (like Spanish) or you are speaking one of those languages. Let’s also try not to say that either.

Cocoa bean: The seed of the Theobroma cacao, whether it is raw, fermented, or roasted.

Cocoa nib: The interior of a cocoa bean, broken along natural fissures, that has had the outer protective shell or husk removed. The process of removing the husk is called winnowing.

Chocolate (noun): Etymologists have traced the origin of the word chocolate to the Aztec word xocoatl, which refers to a non-sweetened drink made from cocoa beans. The Latin name for the cocoa tree, Theobroma cacao, means “food of the gods.” Many modern historians have estimated that chocolate has been around 1,500–2,000 years, but recent research indicates it could be even older, some pushing it out as far as 5,000 years. The modern product is produced from grinding up fermented, roasted cocoa nibs with sugar to produce a smooth (in most cases) and luscious delight (you know what chocolate is).

Chocolate (adj): Anything that cocoa or chocolate (n) has been added to or has had things added to it that make it no longer chocolate (n). Examples are chocolate ganache (cream is added to chocolate), chocolate cake (chocolate is added to the cake), and of course chocolate beer.

Cocoa butter: The fat that comprises 50–55% of the cocoa bean.

Cocoa powder: The finely ground solids that remain after cocoa beans are pressed to remove the cocoa butter.

When most people hear the word chocolate, they picture a sweet bar, a truffle, or maybe a cute hollow milk chocolate bunny. That, though, has only been the case for the last 10% of chocolate’s long history. Before that it was strictly a drink, and sugar didn’t have anything to do with it. I first discovered this in my teens when I tried making what was put out there as traditional Aztec hot chocolate as presented by Jeff Smith, The Frugal Gourmet. It combined (if my memory is right) chicken stock, cocoa powder, cinnamon, and Tabasco sauce. Sadly, it was truly horrific. In the decades since then I now can look back and know why it was so bad (my first fault was using low-grade cocoa powder).

The Chemistry of Chocolate

Making chocolate is involved. In many ways it is as complex as brewing beer. I mentioned previously chocolate is fermented. More specifically, the fruit or pod from the cocoa tree Theobroma cacao is split open and the seeds (the cocoa beans) are scooped out and piled together until they start to naturally ferment, converting natural sugars to ethanol and then into acetic acid. Over the 3–8 days this takes, a bunch of chemical and physical changes occur in the cocoa bean. Generally speaking, pre-cursor chemicals are produced that, upon roasting, produce the signature flavor and aroma we think of as chocolate. Other compounds are broken down and bitterness and astringency are greatly reduced. The beans are then dried and made available to chocolate makers. The cocoa beans are then roasted to develop those chocolate flavors in addition to sterilizing them.

Unlike most beer fermentation, the fermentation of cocoa makes use of many different yeast and fungus strains, most of which would lead to horrible contamination in beer. I can’t stress enough how important it is to use roasted beans or nibs for this reason. After the beans are roasted, they are winnowed to remove the husk. The cocoa nibs are then ground to release the natural cocoa butter present and reduce the particle size of both the cocoa solids and any sugar (plus milk powder for milk chocolate) until the chocolate is smooth to the tongue. It is also worth mentioning that in large industrial chocolate making, refining (particle size reduction) is a separate procedure from another process called conching. In the simplest terms, conching is stirring the heated chocolate so that undesirable compounds can be released. In small-batch chocolate making, melangers (a form of stone grinder) refine and conch at the same time over 1–3 days. After chocolate is made, it is tempered. For the purposes of this article, there is no reason to go into that further.

For those of you who like data, cocoa beans contain about 55% fat. The remainder is approximately 10% complex carbohydrate, no sugar (it has been all fermented out), 20% fiber, and 15% protein. That fat has repercussions in brewing that we will be dealing with in a bit.

Chocolate Beer Styles

Even before the semi-recent craze of making chocolate beers or beers with cocoa, many styles have long been described as having chocolate notes. The use of various roasted and dark malts often gives porters and stouts those hints of chocolate. There are even two specialty malts specifically called chocolate malt and pale chocolate malt that lend the impression of chocolate to the finished beer. Those additions don’t really give strong chocolate flavors though, and brewers in their heady drive to create a greater chocolate flavor started trying to use actual chocolate. Over the years I’ve seen and tasted the results of adding chocolate to the boil, nibs in the mash, powder in both, and various permutations in the secondary . . . and frankly it is kind of bewildering trying to determine what works, what doesn’t, and what makes a horrific mess (spoiler — chocolate bars).

Before we jump into how to add chocolate to your beer, let’s take a passing glance at what styles you can or may want to add them to. The most obvious are the entire host of darker beers — porters, stouts, Belgian darks and dubbels, doppelbocks, old ales, Scotch ales, and even brown ales and bocks. But oh, those are the low hanging fruit (low hanging cocoa pods?). Looking at other beverages, I have personally done chocolate mead (arguably a chocolate metheglin if you count cocoa as a spice), chocolate sake, and chocolate wine all to varying degrees of success. 

What I have not seen but would love to see are some off the wall chocolate beers even if it pushes them outside their traditional parameters. I think a chocolate mild could be great as well as an amber or even a saison. Going out on a limb, a cocoa IPA or Pilsner could be really interesting. How about a cocoa wit? 

“But the color,” I hear you yelling . . . and I’ll say I did give the caveat that it would be pushing style characteristics. I say let imagination be your guide and that there are no taboos. Before we jump into how you can start adding chocolate, I’ll point out that it surprises many people that cocoa and chocolate don’t contribute a lot of color. Unlike many adjuncts, due to cocoa’s really high fat content, and the nature of the rest of the solids in it, there is surprisingly little that wants to extract with water. This is why a chocolate IPA could still end up pale. And that right there is a fine segue into the trials and tribulations of adding cocoa to your beer (or mead, wine, or sake).

Adding Chocolate

There are five different times in which you can add chocolate while you are making beer and believe it or not, at least nine forms you can add to contribute chocolate flavor.

What forms do you have to work with?

• Cocoa nibs (roasted)

• Ground cocoa nibs (roasted)

• Brewing cocoa (ground roasted cocoa beans)

• Cocoa powder

• Chocolate

• Chocolate malt

• Pale chocolate malt

• Chocolate extracts (oil- or alcohol-based)

• Chocolate extracts (water-based)

You can add them to:

• The mash

• The boil

•Primary fermentation

• Secondary fermentation

• At bottling/kegging

If you were to build a matrix of permutations you would come up with 45 different options if tested individually, not even touching upon the source of the nibs you use (yes, that affects flavor as nibs from Ghana will taste different from those from Ecuador, etc.), how much to add, and whether you combine the techniques. For the math geeks out there, there are over 4 million combinations if you start mixing and matching. Lucky for us, many of them can be excluded as they just don’t make any sense, like adding a piece of chocolate at bottling —  or really, even adding a bar of chocolate to the secondary. It is just going to float there and not extract any of its decadent goodness. Truthfully, the only reasonable place to add a chocolate bar is in the boil (which still doesn’t mean that you should).

So our guiding principles for chocolate additions are threefold:

• Is it safe to add a certain ingredient to a particular stage of brewing?

• Is it effective to add a certain ingredient at a particular stage of brewing?

• Does the addition actually deliver the chocolate character we want?

OK, so now let’s break down these options with some more practical advice on when and how they can be used in your homebrews.

Cocoa nibs

Nibs behave pretty much anywhere except at bottling. They do fine in the mash, in the boil, and in the secondary. I’m not a fan of them in the primary as even cleaned and roasted nibs can have minor bacterial contamination. In the first two you are going to be sterilizing them and in the later, alcohol levels help significantly in warding off any minor bugs present. In all cases I find treating nibs as a minor adjunct just doesn’t work well. To my taste, they just don’t have enough water-soluble flavor if you add them at a rate of 2–4 oz. (56–112 g) per 5-gallon (19-L) batch. I like a dose rate of 8–12 oz. (225–340 g) per 5-gallon (19-L) batch.

Ground nibs

Generally speaking, I don’t like doing this. When I’ve tried it the costs outweighed the benefits. Yes, you get more flavor by increasing the contact area, but often those flavors are not great and it can lead to issues most everywhere from stuck sparges, clogged chillers, or clogged siphon tubes.

Brewing cocoa

This is ground, whole-roasted cocoa beans. In contrast to the ground nibs, brewing cocoa is coarser and doesn’t seem to lead to as many issues. I don’t recommend it going into the secondary though. The husk just doesn’t play well and you can get some funk there.

Cocoa powder

Use it in the boil or at bottling (boiled with your priming sugar). Cocoa powder requires heat to get it to play well with water. This is the main reason it doesn’t do well in the secondary. It is messy and tends to want to just float and clump. You can try incorporating it in some hot water but I find it doesn’t contribute that much flavor.

Chocolate

The only choice you have for chocolate is putting it in the boil. Everywhere else it will either clog your system or just sit there because it’s cold. Unfortunately, the cocoa butter in the chocolate makes a horrible mess requiring chilling and skimming and even so can decimate head retention.

Chocolate malt & pale chocolate malt

Use in the mash, 4–16 oz. per 5-gallon (115–450 g/19-L) batch. Ten percent of a recipe’s grain bill is generally the highest amount recommended by maltsters.

Chocolate extract (oil- and alcohol-based)

These just don’t want to play well in water when oil-based, and the alcohol-based options are either cost prohibitive or give a very distinct and unpleasant fake extract flavor, in my opinion and experience.

Chocolate extract/slurry (water-based)

These are products like Amoretti and Cholaca. They are super easy to use and can go into the boil, primary, secondary, or even be added right at bottling. To me, these are similar to a cocoa nib slurry and they are catching on with commercial brewers of all sizes. 

On to the Experiments

Now, I know that is both a lot, and at the same time doesn’t tell you a whole bunch. Fear not, I’m not going to leave you there as I’ve done my best to show my work. In preparation for this article, I brewed up 17 different ales (not over 4 million — sorry, not sorry), adding the main contenders to the stage of brewing that I believe gave them the best chance of success. The base ale was a very simple brown ale. I didn’t want the roast character of a stout to overshadow our results. Here is the recipe that I used:

The 5-gallon (19-L) equivalent Brown Ale recipe: 
8 lbs. (3.6 kg) dried malt extract
1 lb. (0.45 kg) Special B malt
1 lb. (0.45 kg) Crystal malt (120 °L)
1 lb. (0.45 kg) caramel malt (120 °L)
1 oz. (28 g) East Kent Golding hops (60 min.)
Wyeast 1728 (Scottish Ale)

I spent the day meticulously dividing out the base recipe, adding the various chocolate additions and fermenting separately. Chart 1, below, shows the variations of each batch split. For all of these, the amounts listed are equivalent to what I would have used in 5 gallons (19 L). The boil and mash times are all one hour.

With myself, a member of my staff, and a couple of local professional brewers who have used cocoa nibs in their brews (go check out Mocha Rhino Suit from Alesong), we tasted all of these and I have to say, the results were not quite what I expected, even knowing that chocolate flavor is notoriously difficult to add to beer (hence this article).

An Excel file with our complete set of tasting notes can be found here.

However, to follow is my take on each one distilled down between the notes and conversation during the tasting. All the beers were tasted blind initially and we went back to discuss them further after the reveal. Spoiler – no one beer came out on top but the combos were found to have the most promise.

1: The control. No particular chocolate, tart, or sour notes were detected in the aroma nor in the taste. The head retention was mediocre.

2. Adding regular roasted nibs to the secondary surprisingly did not add much of anything in the way of chocolate. They added a little tartness and acidity.

3. The addition of cocoa powder to the secondary turned out to cause massive nucleation and the result was a gusher. Setting that aside, the body was a touch better but no one liked it due to the muddy quality it gave to the whole profile.

4. Adding the off-the-shelf Cholaca at bottling didn’t do much. Sure it was easy to add, and it did seem to add a little body, but I would say no real chocolate quality. After the reveal we all wondered if more was needed. I took a stab in the dark at the dosage rate as the company’s only dosing suggestion was to experiment. 

5. The addition of cocoa powder at bottling didn’t do much, but thankfully it also didn’t cause the gusher that adding it in the secondary did. We surmised the boiling of it with priming sugar may have caused a bonding of the particles to prevent nucleation. One person noted a little cocoa in the aroma.

6. Cholaca in the primary showed a little promise, with better and fuller mouthfeel, touches of fruit and roast.

7. Adding nibs to the boil produced a very interesting heady aroma. Everyone noted resin or solvent and not like a defect of fusel alcohols, but more like intense non-descript fruity esters. It also was decidedly sweeter. I have no explanation for that as the final gravity was the same as
all the rest.

8. Adding brewing cocoa to the boil produced mixed results. Some liked it and found chocolate notes, some didn’t care for the overall end product, even with noting the chocolate contribution.

9. Chocolate in the boil . . . I didn’t want to do it as I’ve heard nothing but bad things but in the name of science I went onward. The stories were right. The cocoa butter killed the head, left floaters suspended, and just made for an unappealing beer. No one finished it. The resulting beer tasted nothing like the control nor the chocolate that was used.

10. The addition of cocoa powder to the boil seems to have co-precipitated other things out as it was decidedly thinner than the control and a bit sour/acidic with extra bitterness.

11. I was excited to test out adding darker roasted nibs to the boil. The feedback I’d heard from brewers was that it provides more flavor with the higher roast and that turned out to be true. In this case we think the roast level might have been too high (365 °F/185 °C) and that something more moderate in the range of 300–325 °F (149–163 °C) could be a real sweet spot. Descriptors that came up included: Porter-like, depth of flavor, brownies, and fullness.

12. Just a touch of regular roasted cocoa nibs in the mash added fruity acidity and sourness. Some people noted a touch of chocolate but some did not. The general response was “meh.”

13. The same nibs at four times the level produced a cleaner fruit flavor, fuller body, and was generally liked even if it was not particularly chocolate-like.

14. When the dark roasted nibs were added to the mash, the tasting notes seemed to skew to more fruity and acidic again, losing that depth of flavor that was there when the nibs were boiled. This to me makes lots of sense if you think of making tea at 155 °F (68 °C) vs. making it with boiling water. There is certainly some aroma potential here.

15. It was both a surprise and not when we thought about it that adding traditional chocolate malt to the mash was really clean, added great cocoa notes to the aroma, and different levels/types of chocolate overtones to the beer itself. This beer was quite well received.

16. On the other hand, the addition of only pale chocolate malt was not received as well. Mostly non-descript. The overall conclusion was that pale chocolate malt is probably fine for layering but not as a single addition if chocolate character is the goal.

17. And now, for the finale we tasted one that I tossed the kitchen sink into. Nibs, brewing cocoa, and chocolate malts in the mash, more nibs, brewing cocoa, plus cocoa powder, Cholaca, and chocolate in the boil, yet more nibs and powder in the secondary, plus powder and Cholaca at bottling. It was just a hot mess. Take every slightly negative about the single additions and amplify them. It was muddy, chunky, and just too bitter. Hard pass — don’t do it. It was worth a shot, right? Personally I think the powder and chocolate probably ruined it.

And that my friend concludes our regularly scheduled program . . . but wait, there’s more! I put together at bottling six combinations from the earlier brews, really just going on instinct and, with the exception of that last kitchen sink combo, all showed remarkable promise. The numbers that follow are 50/50 blends with the corresponding batch numbers:

7&11. Dark and regular nibs in the boil added complexity with hints of cocoa and brownies.

11&13.  Dark nibs in the boil and regular nibs in the mash, again, added depth of flavor including cocoa, fruit, and sweetness.

11&14. Dark nibs in both the mash and boil was a real winner for myself and the panel. The combination added roasted notes, very little fruit, cocoa aroma, and some real easy drinking.

12&17. Regular nibs in the boil and the kitchen sink. Hot mess, moving on.

15&16. Finally, when both chocolate malts were mixed the body went up. I found this quite interesting if you keep in mind, since they were mixed, there was only half as much as the originals. Again, the combo was a real winner among our tasters.

As I previously said, no one addition did the trick (at least, to our very high standards) but basically all of the combinations (let’s just agree to forget about the #17 kitchen sink mess) showed more complexity and chocolate aromas, with the chocolate malts and dark nibs really shining. And well, I suspect no one is surprised that some complexity to the grain bill is almost always well received. There is an interesting fact about chocolate flavor that surprises many people. 

There is no one chemical responsible for “chocolate” just like there is not one pure pigment for the color teal. Among some of the more interesting chemicals responsible are those that give boiled cabbage, stale sweat, and old eggs their characteristic smells. To me, this explains quite well why no single addition was as well received as the combinations.

In summary

• Chocolate bars (even high-end chocolate) and cocoa powders are just not worth using to brew with.

• Water-based extracts or slurries and brewing cocoa hold promise, but either price or negative notes (in my admittedly limited experimenting with these types of products) do not have me recommending them.

• You should certainly be adding chocolate malt to your chocolate beers and some pale chocolate malt certainly is not going to hurt.

• A deeper roasted cocoa nib, combined with some regular nibs and traditional chocolate malts, added at various points in your brew is really the way to go. Putting together a recipe to try next, taking what we learned here, it would look something like this:

The 5-gallon (19-L) Equivalent Chocolate Brown Ale recipe:

Mash Grain bill
8 lbs. (3.6 kg) dried malt extract
1 lb. (0.45 kg) Special B malt
1 lb. (0.45 kg) crystal malt (120 °L)
1 lb. (0.45 kg) caramel malt (120 °L)
8 oz. (227 g) chocolate malt
8 oz. (227 g) pale chocolate malt
8 oz. (227 g) dark roasted (315 °F/157 °C) cocoa nibs

In the boil (60 minutes)
8 oz. (227 g) Regular roasted (260 °F/127 °C) cocoa nibs
8 oz. (227 g) Dark roasted (315 °F/157 °C) cocoa nibs
1 oz. (28 g) East Kent Golding hops (60 min.)
Wyeast 1728 (Scottish Ale)

Secondary Additions (for 2–6 days, tasting daily)
8 oz. (227 g) Regular roasted (260 °F/127 °C) cocoa nibs
8 oz. (227 g) Dark roasted (315 °F/157 °C) cocoa nibs

The final two things I want to mention that came up a lot during the tasting was that all cocoa nibs are not created equal and that a little counter intuitively slightly fruity and nutty beans tend to work better than ones that are deeply chocolate. As I mentioned, chocolate is not one chemical, but a combination of at least 20, and the more variation you get in there the better chance you have of getting that elusive chocolate coming through. 

The other thing is that this was a medium-strength beer that I used for these test brews (~8% ABV). Alesong reported significantly better results with bigger beers (over 10% ABV) and slightly darker nibs in the secondary for a limited time. The extra alcohol acts as a solvent extract more and they limit the time in the same way you limit the time on brewing a fine tea or French press pot of coffee. More for a shorter time is much better than less and longer as that tends to over-extract sour and acidic compounds that overshadow the good stuff.

Lastly, as a direct response to this article, Chocolate Alchemy created a blend of cocoa nibs specially roasted at 300-315 °F (149–167 °C) for beer additions, available in all quantities. That’s not (entirely) a sales pitch, but a result of these trials. And, for reading this article, we’re offering 15% off all cocoa beans, nibs, and brewing cocoa for your brewing adventures with the code BYO15.