Brewing With a Secret Ingredient

Have you ever been challenged to make a beer featuring a secret ingredient? Let me introduce my local homebrew club’s event: Iron Kettle.

What is Iron Kettle?

Iron Kettle is an “end-of-the-club-calendar-year” event from my local homebrew club that challenges brewers to feature a secret ingredient in their finished beer. Grains and hops, along with the selected secret ingredient, are provided to the brewers at no cost. For the yeast, it’s the brewer’s choice. The brewer’s final proposed recipe is shared with the event coordinator before mashing in. 

This year, the following grains were provided:

  • 10 lb/4.5 kg 2-row
  • 3.3 lb/1.5 kg Maris Otter
  • 3.5 lb/1.6 kg White Wheat Malt
  • 3.3 lb/1.5 kg Unmalted Wheat
  • 0.66 lb/300 g Midnight Wheat
  • 1 lb/454 g Flaked Rye
  • 1 lb/454 g Flaked Barley
  • 1.33 lb/600 g Caramel 20L
  • 1.33 lb/600 g Caramel 90L
  • 0.66 lb/300 g Carapils
  • 0.66 lb/300 g Carafa I

And these are the hops that were provided, as well.

  • 3 oz/85 g Chinook (14.4% AA)
  • 1 oz/28 g Perle (5.2% AA)
  • 1 oz/28 g Falconer’s Flight 7Cs (10% AA)
  • 1 oz/28 g Galena (12.5% AA)
  • 1 oz/28 g Willamette (5.8% AA)

And for the secret ingredient: Lemon Crème Cookies!

Recipe Considerations

These cookies have a delicate flavor, so with my recipe design, I went with a lighter base to let those flavors shine.And I think using Philly Sour will help accentuate the lemon flavor from the cream filling. Almost like a Berliner Weisse. We’ll name this beer: Eisenkessel.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post about Berliner Weisse, Berliner Weisse is “a very pale, refreshing, low-alcohol German wheat beer with a clean lactic sourness and a very high carbonation level. A light bread dough malt flavor supports the sourness, which shouldn’t seem artificial. A gentle fruitiness is found in the best examples.” And with Philly Sour, I get a lemony-dough flavor in other beers containing 50+% wheat malt. Sounds like a great place to start for this challenge.

To try to allow both the cookie and lemon flavors to shine, I decided that separating the cream filling from the cookie was probably the best course. The cookies will be added to the mash. With the cream, I’ll create a vodka tincture that will be added during the last part of fermentation.

Brewing Eisenkessel

Mash

Water

For this batch, I started with reverse osmosis water and added calcium chloride, calcium sulfate, magnesium sulfate, sodium bicarbonate, and lactic acid to reach the target water profile.

Water Profile

Ca2+Mg2+Na+ClSO42-HCO3pH
332185026415.5

Grain

The grain bill is:

  • 51% White Wheat Malt
  • 49% 2-row

The cookies were added to the mash after the grain was doughed in.

Mash Profile

After thoroughly stirring the grain into the strike water, the mash was held at

  • 60 °C for 40 minutes
  • 68 °C for 30 minutes
  • 78 °C for 10 minutes for mash out

The malt pipe was raised and the grain bed was sparged with water to rinse the residual sugars back into the wort.

Next, the wort was heated to a boil.

Boil

The wort was boiled for 30 minutes. 

Hops

A single charge of Chinook was added at the beginning of the boil to provide 7 IBUs.

Chill

After the boil, the wort was transferred to a hot cube, allowed to cool to room temperature, and then transferred to a fermentor. The wort was aerated for 10 minutes using an aquarium pump fitted with an aeration stone.

Fermentation

Yeast

For this batch, I used Philly Sour from Lallemand.

Fermentation Profile

For fermentation, the temperature was held at 22 °C (72 °F) for 2 days, before the temperature was raised to 25 °C (77 °F) until fermentation was complete.

When the gravity started to stabilize, I added the cream-filling tincture to the fermentor and left the beer to sit for a few more days.

After fermentation, the beer was transferred to a keg and carbonated to 3 volumes of CO2.

Brew Day

Check out the video below to see how I made this beer.

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