Some things about beer remain a mystery to me. For instance, why people persist in buying Corona and putting a wedge of lemon or lime in it. Surely the fact that you have to add something to the beer to make it drinkable should make you realise that you should be buying a better beer.
Another thing is people putting chili in beer. Granted I’ve only had one chili beer before this, which was the worst beer I’ve ever had. And I’m not the guy who orders the super-hot menu items in a Mexican restaurant. But I just don’t understand why you’d put a chili in beer? Why turn something that is supposed to be relaxing and enjoyable into something that causes your mouth and throat displeasure?
So why did I buy another chili beer? Because I was hoping to discover the answer to my question, to try a beer and go “okay, so that’s why they put chili in beer”. But I didn’t get that epiphany with Matso’s Chili Beer. It was actually rather unpleasant. Unlike “the worst beer in the world”, there is no actual chili floating in this bottle. But there is a lot of chili heat.
It started out like any normal beer but about a second after I had my first sip, the chili heat raced in and really burned my mouth and lips. What was even worse was, after I swallowed, I could feel all that chili heat sitting in my stomach. Even when I’ve eaten hot food I’ve never had an experience like that. It was like I had pure liquid chili pooling in my stomach.
A deeply unpleasant beer and one that was poured down the drain after just two sips.
Categories: Chili beer
BEER IS YOUR FRIEND 
Chili beer is a funny sort. To me, it seems like it exists just for the sake of proving that brewers can make it. You have to really love chilies to enjoy it, and even then it may be a bit off of what you expect.
I’ve only had two pepper-infused brews I could ever stand, one of which I made myself. Even then, I could only drink one bottle before needing a break.
Yeah, I couldn’t imagine a chili beer being a session beer. Definitely a “one and done” kind of deal.
did you try Death from Above at GABS?, it had chilli and was awesome
I did and I agree with the assessment that it was awesome. But the chili in that beer was balanced with a range of other ingredients. When I say “chili beer” I mean a beer in which the chili is the sole focal point.
Awesome, still it seems a little out of whack to talk about a beer with chilli being balanced. I haven’t had one of those chilli beers for a while where it just tastes like burning capsicum with bubbles, I don’t remember that being a good thing either, Death from Above however, just that nice warming “oh there’s chilli in this beer feeling”. Speaking of things that shouldn’t be in beer how’s the kiwi fruit beer going?
I bottled The Cynic (the name of the kiwi fruit beer) on Friday. Reckon I’ll have a sneaky sample of it this Friday. The early hydro samples had some nice kiwi flavour but that seemed to diminish in the later samples.
Still very interested to see how it turns out. Then I can get onto the next beer – chocolate coconut porter. Got a choc porter recipe and just need to work out how and where to add coconut to it. My hunch is somewhere right near the end of the boil.
skip the boil, add some coconut extract in the bottle, couple of drops should go ok
So that’s two drops per bottle, done at bottling time, yeah?
depends on the essence and how big the bottle is. Take a fermenter sample, get 100ml container, a drop is about a ml, so add some drops until it tastes right, then go back one and figure out a rate from that. Or try a couple of rates
Its like you read my mind! You seem to know a lot about
this, like you wrote the book in it or something. I think that you can do
with a few pics to drive the message home a little bit, but other than that, this
is great blog. A fantastic read. I will definitely be back.