The Magic of Tinctures

As I brewed an Old Ale for my holiday beer, I was wondering what I'd do to truly make it seasonal. While some brewers will try to add this dimensionality during the boil or in the mash bill, I prefer to use a tincture added to a base beer. 

Iterating One Pint at a Time

In a not-so-past life, I was an IT business analyst. My job was to define and design web applications in an Agile development environment, which is often likened to building the car while you are driving it. This approach - minus the story points and kanban boards - works well for brewing a flavored beer: Rather than try to figure out the flavor additions for an entire 5 gallon batch at once, you develop a starting point and make adjustments incrementally (one pint at a time) until you've got it dialed in. 

You can make up a "flavor bill" and add things during the boil, at flameout, in secondary, etc., but you run the risk of overdoing some flavors and cooking off others. Several HomeBrewTalk members mentioned how they had put in too much cinnamon late in the boil. It's a flavor that won't fade much over time, so now they have 5 gallons of fireball-flavored pumpkin ale. By using a tincture -- an alcoholic extract of plant or animal material --  the worst that can happen is you over-flavor one pint (or even one ounce) of beer. 

Finding the Right Pumpkin Pie Spice Mix

My fall seasonal - Oktober Surprise - was developed iteratively. I started with a base American Amber Ale that was low on aroma hops. I did put in a little bit of rye to add a wee bit of spiciness in the background. The base (4.2% ABV, 35 IBU) turned out to be a damn good beer on its own, but I needed a tincture to make it into a pumpkin-pie-spice ale.

A neutral, high-proof spirit like vodka is a popular and versatile choice for tinctures. I'd rather use a spirit that brings some flavor to the party, as Alton Brown would say. I started my tincture with roughly 2 ounces of Cruzan Single Barrel. I added a cinnamon stick, a little candied ginger, a pinch of whole grains of paradise, some grated nutmeg and one whole vanilla bean. Note: No pumpkins were harmed in the making of this beer. 

I had written out a recipe as a starting point, but I was feeling a little too carefree to follow it. This is bad. Don't do what I did. Stick to your first recipe then accurately measure and note later additions.

I left it to sit for a day, then added 10 drops to a pint. Not strong enough, so in went 10 more. The strength was about right, but I was getting more ginger than anything else. So I added another cinnamon stick, another vanilla bean and exactly one clove. Why one? Because Mrs. Zymurginian doesn't like clove, and when 30% of your "market" speaks, you listen. I let it sit for another day, then tested again. Much improved, but not quite there. I added a bit more nutmeg and a dash of vanilla extract (I was out of beans).  This third iteration was damn close to what I had in mind, so I stopped there. 

Now I had discovered that 20 drops per pint was the right level, but how does that scale up to 5 gallons? At 20 drops/pint and 40 pints/batch of beer, I'd need 800 drops of tincture. I certainly wasn't going to count out all those drops, so time to do math. One fluid ounce is roughly 600 drops, so I'd need 1.3 ounces of finished tincture. With the liquid loss to the ginger and spices, my starting 2 ounces of rum yielded 1.5 ounces of tincture. As dad used to say, close enough for government work.  

I slowly vented my keg and poured in the tincture. I gave it a shake then repressurized. I let it sit overnight before pulling a sample. It was heavenly. It was a little spicy and a little sweet, but not too much of either. The Mrs. was impressed. I took some to my homebrew club to try and it was a hit. It's a good sign when club members hunt you down to try it. 

More tinkering

A tincture turned an amber ale
into an Oktober Surprise

The beer turned out so well, I went so far as to give it a name and make a tap handle for it. Oktober Suprise will be on tap next year for Cherrydale Brewing ("Served in the finest basements!"). Nevertheless, there were two more things I wanted to try. I bought a creamer faucet (aka nitro tap) earlier in the year and had been serving small amounts of my beers on nitro just to see what would happen. It made my anniversary maibock smoother and my low-alcohol oatmeal stout drinkable, but what would it do for a spicy beer? It was great on regular CO2, but nitro turned it up to 11. The nitro head added a physical creaminess to the vanilla notes and made the other spices more noticeable. The club members said it was a genuine dessert beer. Jack up the ABV and this could be a great after-dinner sipper.

I wanted to get the graham-cracker crust flavor in, but I hadn't hit it yet. A club member suggested adding some biscuit malt to the grain bill. Good idea, but not much help for the finished beer. Then I found some graham cracker flavoring at MyLHBS. The aroma is spot on when its diluted. Sniffing straight from the bottle is more buttery than anything else. I treated like another tincture and added a few drops at a time to a pint. This was harder to gauge, but 10-15 drops per pint seemed right. I transferred some Oktober to a 1.6gal Torpedo keg and added a tablespoon (~75 drops) of the flavoring. Still tasty on nitro, but the graham flavoring came across as cloying. And to think the label says 4 ounces for 5 gallons!

The Takeaway: Tinctures Save Beer!

Unlike kettle or secondary additions, tinctures allow you to fine-tune your flavorings using small amounts of beer. You won't accidentally over-spice a batch by dosing one pint at a time. Tinctures also lets you add flavors that might weaken when cooked. A pinch in the tincture is worth two (or more) in the boil.