I am part of a Sunday league hockey team and for the new season I am planning on brewing a beer that will be ready for the end of season party.
Part of our tradition for after games is to go to the nearest bar and eat all the wings and drink pitchers of Yueng Ling - so I was thinking a chicken wing flavor beer.
Whilst relatively new to brewing - I am fairly certain that throwing a dozen hot and spicy wings into the boil is not going to get the desired affect I want.
So my plan is a spiced Rye Saison using paprika, mustard seed, ground pepper and chili. I picked a rye saison as it seemed the best beer to hold those flavors.
Can anyone think of anything else I could add to get that chicken wing flavor without it actually tasting like a chicken or Franks hot sauce?
Not sure about those mustard seeds. They don’t taste like prepared mustard per se and if you use enough to taste them you might wish you didn’t.
My $.02 on the idea: if you are actually eating them with spicy chicken wings, the last thing people want is a spicy beer. I would rather have a pilsner or such.
Maybe a hockey inspired beer. I think that would involve maple syrup.(edit: garnish with a broken tooth)
I think this is one of those ideas that would benefit from your making various small tinctures of a spice mix and then dosing a bottled beer to see what flavors you get.
Put some spices into a small jar with some vodka. Let them sit for a few days or a week. Open the bottled beer, add tincture with a dropper, let it disperse, taste and see.
Maybe you could dose a commercial rye saison? If not, go with something that does not have over powering hop or other flavors.
:o :-\ Ok, aside from that, wing sauce is a mix of Frank’s and butter. The chile part would come easy - steep Cayenne peppers in beer until the heat is where you like it then pull the chiles. The butter part is the tricky part. Only thing that comes to mind is diacetyl, not normally a good thing. Maybe ferment with Ringwood on a short schedule?
I think this sounds better than the corner beef sandwich beer someone wanted to make a couple years ago.
Personally a Cock Ale would be my base beer for this.
That’s awesome. When I started brewing, a maple bacon Porter sounded good. I just ended up with a salty Porter.
When I saw the thread “Chicken Wing Beer” my first thought was West Coast IPA! When I have some good hot wings I go for WCIPA or BMC (Bud, Miller, Coors).
To answer your question maybe a pepper beer with ranch dressing seasoning. I prefer blue cheese with my wings but I’m not sure how one would safely get that flavor into beer.
EDIT: Note- ranch seasoning packets may have powdered milk in them I’m not sure. I’d check first. Maybe look up the herbs and spices used in ranch dressing and make your own seasoning from scratch. Make about 1/4 cup. Add 25% the last few minutes of the boil then a teaspoon at a time in secondary. Let it sit a day then sample and add more if needed. I usually don’t use secondary except when massively dry hopping. You may just want to add it to primary. Also, if I doesn’t taste like Frank’s Hot Sauce then it’s not Buffalo wings.
Chili Beer is probably the best way to go, imo. It doesn’t have to taste like chicken, but spicy beer will work just fine. No need to go crazy trying chicken flavor in your beer, buttery beer is always bad. I would say a mixture of dried anchos, arbol, and habanero is the place to start.
If you want to try to get chicken in your beer, I would say boiling stock or bouillon. However, that is nothing I would try outside of a 1 gallon xbmt.
I definitely don’t want chicken in my beer or it to really taste like chicken but enough of the associated tastes that when someone tries it they think ‘this is a great beer and for some reason makes me think of chicken wings’.
A brewery near me just did an Hawaiian pizza IPA - had enough nods to the pizza style it definitely made you think of it without being loaded with cheese!
If you are looking for a good spicy beer with some heat there is a brewery in Rochester that brews a Jalapeno IPA that is fantastic! Its just a simple IPA base recipe but they load it with Jalapenos. It has some good flavor and body with good heat at the end. Very enjoyable and seems simple to make.
A lot of the flavors while eating wings are not flavors I generally associate with a positive beer experienced. For example, Franks Red Hot is cayenne, garlic and vinegar. Two of those are generally not flavors you want in a beer. Same for other flavors like blue cheese, buttermilk and chives (both in ranch dressing).
The flavors that probably make the most sense are cayenne in the sauce and a small amount of parsley and dill from ranch dressing.
Saison would be an okay choice and maybe 3711 fermented in the 60s gives you a little earthy funk that resembles something of blue cheese (without the cheese). I’d also think about a simple pale ale where a little more sweetness will balance against the cayenne in the way the fats in butter, cheese, milk and cream balance out the heat when eating wings.
I agree the majority of flavours are not ones that you would want associated with beer which makes this a stretch of an idea. However, by brewing so far has been very unimaginative so happy to take a bit of a plunge.
I’m liking the saison with cayenne, parsley and dill idea at the moment. May ditch the rye part, although I do like a nice rye beer.
Wyeast 3711 also sounds like a good yeast to use. 3724 also looks like a possibility - but doubt I would be able to maintain the fermentation temps required over the next month or so.
For 3724 you can get an aquarium heater and put the heater and fermenter in a Rubbermaid container filled with water. Last time I did this I used a box sold for storing Christmas light strings. It’s a smaller box, so the volume of water was less. I was able to maintain 80 degrees with ease simply using the thermo on the heater. This was winter on the floor of my basement, so ambient air probably in the mid 60s and a pretty cold floor.
So I am going to test the dill/parsley/peppercorn/cayenne idea on a commercial saison (rye if possible) to see what the flavours do and judge how much to add/check it is not the worst idea ever.
I am currently thinking of making 5 gallons of straight rye saison, then pulling 2.5 gallons into secondary and adding a tincture there. Or possibly ‘dry herbing’ with the dill/parsley. From what I have read about Wyeast 3711 it may be hard to get the dill/parsley flavours to be present with a spicy/fruity yeast.
Also trying to work out what is best with the cayenne – I want the flavor but not a huge amount of spice. I would have thought adding it at the end of the boil (without seeds) would achieve this – but that would mean cayenne in all 5 gallons? Should I just go full steam ahead with 5 gallons of this instead of trying to split it?
5 Gallon Chicken Wing Rye Saison
OG 1.068
FG 1.016
6.92% ABV
Mash @ 152 for 60 mins
Boil 60 mins
Grain bill
1/3rd lb rice hulls
9lbs Belgian Pilsner 2 row
3lbs German Rye Malt
1oz Styrian Holdings @ 45mins
1oz Styrian Holdings @ 10mins
1/2lb Belgian candi sugar – clear/blond @ 5 mins
