Carolina Reaper IPA Brew Day

On Sunday we brewed an IPA that we're planning as a base for some delicious chili heat. A friend at work has been growing Carolina Reapers (the hottest pepper in the world!) for another friend who loves spicy food. I enjoy spicy beer anyway, such as the Ballast Point Habanero Sculpin, and so brewing a chili beer has been on my radar since we started brewing again.

I found some good info and a recipe at http://www.homebrewing.com/articles/chile-beer.php, so all the brewing was pretty straightforward.  One of the particularly fun parts of the brew day this time was live-tweeting everything from our desert penguin twitter account. Since this beer is a bit tied in with my buddies at work due to the chili peppers, it was fun including more people in the brew day.

The other particularly interesting and fun part of this brew day was creating the chili extract from the Carolina Reaper. We cut the pepper in half and are making two different extracts - one with all the seeds and ribbing intact for full heat, and one with the ribbing and seeds removed to try to get a bit more flavor. The peppers will soak in vodka for the next week extracting the flavor and heat, and I'm really curious to see what that vodka is like in a week when it's time to add it to the beer.

Our plan is to rack the beer into three 1-gallon carboys in order to try three different levels of heat - one with the seedless extract, one with the seedy extract at a normal heat level, and one that is borderline melt-your-mouth for the true hot-heads. That said, I'm a bit worried about our ability to get the spice and heat level just right in the final beers. If we manage to get one batch out of the three that's squarely between "way too mild" and "undrinkably spicy," then I'll consider it a success.

---> [ Carolina Reaper IPA Racking ]