So my local homebrew is having a member brew competition where everybody has to use the same uncommon ingredient. This ingredient is iced oatmeal cookies.
My thought is to crush them and put them in a grain bag during the boil, but I don’t know how that will work. I don’t typically mess with a lot of nontraditional ingredients so I am at a loss on potentially the best way to incorporate. The ingredients contain sugar, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, dextrose and rolled oats. I am assuming I would get some fermentables out of it if I incorporate it at the right time, but what is the right time? Do I necessarily want any fermentables from it? My thought is to incorporate into a stout or porter, but I don’t know.
Any suggestions, thoughts, comments, suggested style, etc. would be greatly appreciated.
I wouldn’t care about fermentables as much as flavor, so I’d put them in for the last 5-10 minutes of the boil to try to extract the spice/cookie flavors.
Stout might have too much competing roast. I think the flavors in english brown would blend nicely. I bet a lot of people will pick browns or stouts though. A well done example in a style nobody expects might stick out more.
For ingredients, I’d go with grains that complement flavors in the cookie - maris otter, crystal 30L-ish, wheat malt maybe? Low hop bitterness to accentuate sweetness. Perhaps cheat by adding some cinnamon. Special B for a raisin note? Oats for mouthfeel might be good too.
The above suggestions are good. Sounds like an interesting experiment.
Just don’t expect great head retention in the finished beer.
I guess it depends on the cookies, but most cookies (the tastier ones, anyway) are made with a fair amount of fat.
One idea I have is to use them in a dunkelweizen recipe that has a lot of spicy phenolic yeast character (I like WY3638 fermented in the low 60’s and slightly underpitched - gives some nice cinnamon and vanilla notes to go with the typical weizen clove and banana). I’d crush the cookies and rack over them in secondary (sort of like using fruit). I have no clue how much to use, so I’d only rack over half the batch so you can then taste and blend back. With this style you don’t really have to worry about cloudiness in the beer, so it should be safe to use the cookies in secondary.
Other ideas:
Oatmeal stout (but this seems a little obvious)
Sub them in for pumpkin/spice in a pumpkin ale recipe
Dry cookie in the secondary, that way you’ll get the freshest cookie flavor and aroma. I had a beer once that was kegged and served on Krispy Kreme Donuts that was exactly the flavor of fresh donuts. Go for an American Amber style.
I am limited to one 14 oz package which is plenty. I don’t think I will even make a 5 gal batch probably 2-3 gallons at most. If it is horrible then I don’t have too much to worry about. If it is great then I have a very limited production, high demand, collectors item that I will sell and make millions off of ;D
This is an interesting idea. Primarily because I just racked a dunkelweizen into a keg last Tuesday. The keg is sealed, but have not started chilling or force carbing it yet. Would it be okay to siphon a portion of this onto the cookies and let sit for a ferw weeks (1-2, 2-3 weeks). It didn’t ferment in the lows 60’s but it was high 60’s (68-69 consistently) and I used your suggested WYEAST 3638. Let me know if you think this will work.
The recipe is below.
5lbs: Weyerman Dark Wheat
3 1/2 lbs. German 2 row pilsner
1 lb German Dark Munich
8 oz Weyermann Caramunich II
4 oz Belgian Special B
I think it will work. I find that I lose a lot of the spicy phenolics that I like with this yeast if I ferment at higher temps, but you still get a lot of nice banana/bubblegum esters. I think it would still pair nicely with the cookies.
What would be your recommendation for the length of time this sits on the cookies? It will not be presented until our October meeting which will be near the end of October.
Would you carbonate at a normal dunkelweizen level when it is bottled?
I think you’re going to have to let taste determine how long to let it sit. You will probably get a secondary fermentation from the sugars in the cookies, so once that settles down start tasting every couple of days.
As far as carbonation levels go, I’m on the fence on that one. For all my weizens I carb to 3 volumes (and I’m starting to slowly stockpile proper german hefe bottles so I can push that even higher in the future). But this is sort of at the crossroads of a spiced ale and a dunkelweizen. For a spiced ale, I’d probably want to shoot for the lower 2’s. Are you carbing off a keg or in bottles? Maybe try some at like 2.2 and some at 3 volumes to see which you like better.
Normally I carb of a keg, but since I am only going to rack over about 1 1/2 - 2 gallons of the dunkel onto the cookies I am going to bottle carb. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I don’t want to have a lot of this stuff just in case it is horrendous, but want just enough so if it is good I can pull it out on special occassions.
I’ll probably shoot for mid 2’s on the carb level.
Not sure if you’ve done this yet but I’d go for a wit. Mash the cookies with the malt to extract what fermentables you can but the cloudiness of the wit would hide the haze you’ll likely get from any flour that sneaks through. Go heavy on the rice hulls. The spices could work in a wit too.
Basic Brewing Radio has an interview with Jeff Britton, then president of the O’Fallon Garage Brewers Society, about this very subject. That club has called it the “Iron Brewer”.
His Oatmeal Cookie ale is one of his rotating taps now at his new brewery. Might be a good listen.
