Has anyone added habanero to their secondary? If so, what is a good amount to add to 5 gallons?
Amounts are going to depend on your tolerance to the heat. When I have used them I have de-seeded and de-veined them and roasted them then added to secondary. I think maybe the last time I used them I only used about 3-4 but I blended other peppers in there too.
Man, it is amazing how much available sugar is in a handfull of peppers. I have blown a couple of firkins before I realized you can’t just add peppers to firkins!
Does de-seeding take away a lot of the heat? From your experience do you think blending about 5 habaneros with the seeds would give too much heat? I don’t t want a super hot beer but maybe a mild to medium heat.
I think 5-10 deseeded and deveined habanero peppers will be plenty of heat. The habanero itself has great flavor I do not like the flavor of the seeds or veins. But, again, it’s personal preference. I prefer the pepper flavor over the heat. But if you want heat I’d ssay add more de-veined/de-seeded peppers, don’t add the seeds. That way you will get more of the fruity character from the pepper not just be heat centered beer.
One of my club members has made a couple of Habanero beers by employing the method below.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Remove-the-Heat-of-a-Pepper-not-simply-de-seeding/
It is a multi-step process, but I can attest that it can be very effective. My fellow member’s first version had huge Habanero flavor and NO heat. He had used something like 10 peppers in a 5 gal batch and had fully and faithfully used the method above. The concensus at our club meeting was that the method is too effective. He repeated the batch, but was a little less emphatic in removing everything. The result was a much more pleasing, yet still light, heat to accompany the huge Habanero flavor.
This is well worth your consideration!
I have gotten plenty of heat from two diced, deveined, and deseeded habs in the keg for about 3 days.
Unfortunately I can’t remember if I deseeded/deveined the peppers but I sliced up around five and soaked them in about a half pint of vodka for four or five days. Only took about 50ml of that tincture in five gallons of wee heavy to get a noticeable but pleasant amount of heat.
For me making a tincture is the most foolproof way to add pepper flavor/heat to a beer…
I tried making a tincture with habaneros and adding drops directly into a bottle of beer as I filled it. It never got hot enough.
Yeah, I can’t imagine that would work. You can just add the peppers near the end of fermentation, not sure why anyone would need to make it more tricky than that.
how do you sanitize the peppers? I want to make a spicy ipa
I split the chiles in half, de-stem and -seed them, and throw them in a mason jar with just enough vodka to cover them. After a week they’ll have given up most of their goodness but I’ll generally add the chiles along with the vodka, to taste.
ok, ill add chiles to vodka for a week. Then put the chiles in the secondary. 5 days too long ?
I’d add the vodka-- but I guess adding both would work. If you just add the chiles, they will be pretty spent after soaking in vodka.
I soaked about 3 deseeded, deveined Habaneros in white rum for a few days then added the rum to a DIPA to taste. The flavor of the Habaneros came through with a small amount of heat.
From some of the comments I’m guessing I did not de-seed when I made my tincture because I could have easily made the beer undrinkable from a heat perspective with just the tincture. Making a tincture might seem like an unnecessary step, but for me it is the easiest way to dial in the amount of heat you really want. I’ve had similar success soaking dried chipotles.
i definitely want the most heat