I love Bacon and I love Beer!… and the first time I came across Rogue’s Voodoo Maple Bacon Ale I thought I’d gone to heaven…
… but…
… when I took the first sip, I felt like I’d gone skydiving with dirty laundry packed as a joke instead of a chute…
… and I hate to say things like that… specially when it involves beer… and bacon…
… and to be sure I did not happen to grab a bad bottle, I consulted with others on my facebook page… they don’t have any good things to say about it and you can see their comments here: Rogue Facebook Comments
… even though the experience was less than pleasant, trying that beer triggered a question in my mind: “What beer style would go good with bacon?”
I’ve been thinking about this for nearly a year and just couldn’t come up with ideas… until…
My friends – who I joke with about having a bacon addiction – greeted me with a Bacon Fried Sundae as I walked into Native New Yorker last week…
… and the light went on…
A vanilla bacon cream ale is now under construction…
… and for this beer I am going to bring you behind the scenes on how I go about putting together a recipe…
This is an experimental beer that I haven’t tested, but I want to share it with you so you can get ideas or at the very least learn what works and what doesn’t work when it comes to brewing a bacon beer…
I’ve found that sharing my mistakes helps more brewers than just sharing good how-to information… so hopefully I can make many mistakes that you can learn from with this brew…
Here’s the recipe in mind…
7 lbs American 6-row
1.5 lbs Flaked Yellow Corn
1.5 lbs American 2-row.
1.5 oz German Spaltz (30 min)
WLP080 Cream Ale Blend
1 Vanilla Pod
4 oz Bacon extract
Here’s my thinking behind the recipe… before I add any sugar adjuncts to dry out the beer, I am going to get a feel for the beer with just the grains and the maize…
The hops I’m using have a fruity, spicy and somewhat of a blackcurrant character, but I’m not expecting much aroma or flavor from them since I’m adding at 30 min… the subtle hop spicyness I think will compliment the vanilla and the hop fruity character will add to the optional and hopefully faint fruity character of being a cream ale…
Now, I don’t know if I’ll be able to get a small pack of vanilla pods, which are a bit expensive, but I rather use the bean rather than the extract… most vanilla extracts are artificial, and the real extracts are just as expensive as the pods…
I am adding the vanilla to the keg, and wait for it to condition… at that point I’ll have made roughly about 6 oz of bacon extract, which I am going to test on a sample of the beer before comitting the entire five gallons…
If I can free up equipment, I’ll be brewing this beer early next week…
Cheers!
