Peepz,
Anyone have any experience with adding rum-soaked raisins to a heavy/strong brown ale? Or a big bock, even?
Greetz
Jo
No experience myself, but I have seen recipes where people “deglaze” the raisins with rum in a saucepan prior to adding it to a beer for further fermentation.
What I do with raisins is caramelize them in a super hot wok, then deglaze with some of the beer they’ll be going into. You could deglaze with the rum, which would burn off some of the alcohol flavor. I find that objectionable in beer anyway.
Agreed in that the goal of adding booze to beer should never be to simply up the booze flavours. I do want the sugar cane flavours of the rum though, and the specific vanilla-orange flavours of this particular rum though.
Deglazing…sounds like it may well be something to experiment with. I could try caramelising the soaked raisins, and keep some of the leftover soaking rum to deepen the flavours when bottling.
So many options, so many angles 
If there are delicate flavors in the rum that you want to keep then I would avoid deglazing with it because the heat is likely to drive off components of that flavor. Might be a better option to either avoid using heat altogether or caramelize the raisins and then soak them in rum.
So. Caramelising raisins.
How exactly? I reckon they’ll burn/scorch rather than caramelise unless I soak’m in something first…
If it’s like caramelizing onions, like I suspect it is, low and slow
In cooking you would add butter or oil to caramelize to avoid sticking and burning but here you don’t want to add that fat content. Best method is probable what Denny describes. Get a pan really hot and throw in the raisins. You need to move them around a lot to keep them from sticking and burning and it should only take 2-3 minutes. You can then deglaze the pan if you want.
THIS^^^^ and you’ll definitely want to deglaze the pan. I usually uise some of the beer from the primary.
Cheerz y’all!
A British old ale perhaps?
Following up.
It’s decided then: an English barley wine. Of a sort.
Here’s the basic concept, specifics to be decided depending on factors described below, as well as a bit of good old whimsy.
The idea is a big, solid, but stately barely wine. 1.100 to 1.110 OG (24-26°P), aiming at 11% ABV (1.026 FG / 6.5°P).
Malt bill would be mostly pale, with a bit of wheat and/or oats for smoother mouthfeel. I reckon 1.026 would be suffient so as not not need crystal/caramel malts for additional body. The caramelised raisins should be sufficient beef up the caramel flavours by themselves, and the rum will give a kick to the booziness, both in strength and in flavour.
Given the size restrictions of my mash tun, I’m going to partigyle this. Bear with me.
Target OG for the master brew is 1.070.
Say 95% pale, 5% oats.
This should yield 10 liters of 1.090 (B#1)and 20 liters of 1.045 (B#2).
B#1 is the barley wine which will receive additional DME till it reaches the desired OG (1.110).
Bitterness will be on the low end: 30-40 IBU. EKG or similar, although I’m tempted to give Bullion a shot here.
A fruity English or Scottish yeast with medium attenuation.
Rum-soaked raisins + wort-caramelised raisins in secondary.
Maybe a whiff of dryhops just before bottling to liven it all up.
B#2: my buddy wants a summer beer, and I thought to use the second runnings for that.
I brewed a ginger-hibuscus saison last year which was 90% pale and 10% wheat; which is close enough to what the second runnings would yield here to try something similar. 1.045 is light enough, and the ginger/hibiscus combo will compensate for the loss of malt-deepness the second running will intrinsically experience.
3711 French Saison will keep it dry and feisty.
25 IBU with something light and summery (maybe good ol’ Citra). Hibuscus will provide color and tang. I’d like the ginger to be somewhat hot, which I’ve not been able to accomplish yet: ginger juice tends to turn lemonadey in beer. Maybe just boil diced ginger root for the last 5’?
Alternatively, B#2 could also become a simple English bitter. Sprinkle a bit of crystal on top before sparging the second runnings et voila.
Any thoughts on this plan? Planned this for the end of april, which means B#2 will be ready by summer and B#1 will be just about approachable by midwinter.