A fellow cigar smoked asked if I could give a beer strong tobacco notes. He wondered whether leaving hops sit among cigars would work, which I doubted.
But then I wondered if either making an extract with 50/50 Everclear as I do with various peppers, cocao nibs, and vanilla bean, or maybe mashing with whole tobacco leaves.
Any thoughts or recommendation? Has anyone done such a thing?
You’ll find conflicting sources about it, but I personally would not mess around with tobacco leaves. Oral ingestion of nicotine is more toxic than you would think.
Maybe some dark chocolate malt coupled with some of the “Spanish cedar” sticks you find in cigar boxes would evoke the flavors he wants.
This would be a good way to go. A little smoked malt and aged on cedar.
As mentioned above, I don’t know the alcohol solubility of nicotine but in concentrated doses it’s very toxic. I wouldn’t mess with it.
A friend in my homebrew club made a Rauchbier called “Bacon Cigar” that he used mesquite smoked malt for. It was meant to evoke that kind of flavor/aroma of smoked meat and/or tobacco.
I was unaware of nicotine being toxic to that degree. Thanks for the warning and suggestions.
While doing a beer promo at Spec’s the Spanish Cedar was brought up with Cigar City’s Humidor series.
That’s another one for the “dose makes the poison” list. When you smoke tobacco you ingest nicotine in tiny doses… maybe parts per billion, likely parts per million (also, ingested through the lungs, although chew goes through the mouth). If you have pure liquid nicotine a small amount would be fatal, but again, we’re talking the pure stuff so rather than parts per million that’s just 1 to 1 (Or a million parts per million). I’ve heard that a single drop on the tongue would kill you but I don’t know how accurate that is.
Anything in a large enough dose is likely to be toxic. Even water and oxygen can be toxic.
I’m pretty sure that I read somewhere that fuggles can give a tobacco like aroma to beer.
Fuggles, huh? I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks!
That’s propaganda spread by the Fuggle Haters. ;) Seriously, I use Fuggles regularly and never noticed anything I’d call tobacco like. Spice, mint, lightly fruity, a little resinous, a little earthy; but would probably play extremely well with that cedar strips idea! It does suggest woodiness, or at least woodsiness, on its own.
I’m just wondering where I’d get enough to have an impact. I don’t buy boxes of cigars (yet).
Could you ask a cigar shop if they have some available from empty boxes when they sell the cigars individually?