For a long time now (ever since I saw a picture of Piper longum in Randy Mosher’s Radical Brewing) I’ve been meaning to brew a peppercorn beer.
I’ve added black peppercorns and sechuan peppercorns in a porter (secondary ongoing, more on that later) and black peppercorns in an saison (also currently in secondary) and have probably under-dosed both (a novelty for me).
Over time, I’ve collected various types of peppercorns, with the express aim for brewing a peppercorn-forward beer. With that I mean I want the beer to be spicy/hot the way a peppered steak should be, but also savoury/fragrant/aromatic the way peppercorn cream sauce should be (and the way your peppermill smells).
I distinctly remember the collab brew by Cigar City and Amager called Xiquic and the Hero Twins, a spicy-hot imperial stout brewed with black peppercorns and aged on cedar wood, which had ample of the two characteristics I’m looking for.
At my disposal are (all unmilled, uncrushed):
black pepper
white pepper
green pepper
pink pepper
long pepper
szechuan pepper
maniguette pepper which turns out tbe be Grains of Paradise
cubebe pepper
I intend to make a small amount of tea from each variety to study flavour aspects and imported hotness.
I’ll make due notes here but anyone having experience with any of these peppers are welcome to join in.
That porter…Szechuan by itself is very hot (as in “chew a single kernel and your mouth is on fire”) and also numbs the tongue. Very unpleasant by itself, but in food, it becomes a wonderful alchemical compound which totally elevates the dish. I added about 1g of szechuan and 1g of black peppercorns (uncrushed) to a 5gal batch of 1.070 SG porter, which, in secondary now, reveals no peppery touches anywhere. My guess is I should have crushed them, and possibly used more. I’m quite sure I don’t want szechuan in secondary, unless I don’t want people to actually be able to taste the final beer.
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There are different varieties of black peppercorns, and they have slightly different tastes. A friend brews this one, and it is tasty. I did a variation on it, added some smoked peppecorns, and like it. Mike uses Tellicherry pepercorns.
I’ll throw this out there. The people who run the Spice House in Chicago and Milwaukee once told me that there is no difference between Black, Green, Pink, and White peppercorns. They gave a talk on the history of the spice trade that involved people who made more money off the ones that looked different than black, but said that they are not actually different. The only one that tastes and is different is Szechuan.
In “Experimental Homebrewing” there’s a recipe for a tripel made with caramelized honey and white peppercorns. I’ve also used a combo of pink, green and white for it.
From my understanding pink peppercorns are from a differently species. And Black, green and white peppercorns are from the same plant, but are different in the maturity and/or processing.
There is no difference between pilsner malt and black patent malt either. Same difference: black, white, green and red (not pink) pepper is all Piper nigrum in varying stages of maturation/ripeness. Longum is, well, long pepper and closely related to nigrum. Pink pepper actually comes from the shrub Schinus molle. Szichuan is a different species altogether again, called Zanthoxylum.
The point being though that even if the common everyday coloured peppers are the same species, they taste as different from other as grapes and raisins.
Agreed. A big porter or an imperial stout would do nicely.
Lower dosages may work well in dry pale beers (saisons, wit and even pilsners) but may require more subtle handling.
