Tips For Special and Fruit Flavor Beers

Part of the art of brewing involves achieving subtle balances in your beer. Having said this, we all have different conceptions of what these balances are. This is particularly true when adding spices and fruit flavors. For example, one person may like a strong, strident presence of these agents and another person might like a more subtle presence. For this reason, printing recipes with set amounts of these flavoring agents is difficult. We at San Francisco Brewcraft have devised a simple, effective method for adding flavoring agents to beer to account for individual preferences.

Flavoring Method

Purchase one half pint of charcoal filtered vodka. Look deeply into the eyes of your significant other and drink two ounces of this vodka. Add flavoring agents, spices, orange peels, etc to the remaining vodka and let stand for one week. The exact flavor of the flavoring agents will now be dissolved in the alcohol (isomerized). Then simply add one half to two thirds of this tincture to the secondary fermenter when you rack. At bottling time, taste your beer. If the desired flavor is not strong enough, add the rest or part of the tincture. In this way you can adjust these flavors to your taste.

Remember, this is a perfectly legitimate way to accomplish the desired end result. In Europe, they actually have flavorings of this nature at the bar to be added to the drinker's taste.

Our fruit extracts are real fruit (not artificial) flavorings and they make it a lot easier.