Another June, another set of weird ingredients. This year we weren’t as prepared as we could have been. Our holiday was booked around Home brew Sunday because we really wanted to take part but, stupidly, we left it rather late to pick up ingredients to take along.
Thus we found ourselves at a farm shop between Sussex and Manchester picking up random items and asking “Will it brew?”. We came home with liquorice, stuffing and pork scratchings with the intention of inflicting one on some expectant sap the following day.
Actually, what happened was that we liked the look of the expensive liquorice, the posh stuffing and the fancy pork scratchings so popped into Morrisons on the way to the event. There we picked up some Morrisons own brand sage and onion stuffing instead. Practically it would have been difficult for anyone to find the same, fancy, ingredients if they didn’t have enough (unlikely).
On the day people brought along quite an eclectic set of items, including a surprising number of Oriental options such as wasabi and miso. James took down a list of who brought what which I’ll point to once he’s published it.
Our stuffing finished up in the hands of expert sour brewer Keith Sowerby. Steve got kidney beans, which he was less than happy about as they “have no taste!”.
Beardy Dan (mead maker Snoring Bear) sent in absentia a bag of Korean BBQ flavoured crispy seaweed thins, which are now our ingredient we have to brew with. There’s so much wrong with this. BBQ? Seaweed? The massive bags contain no more than 45g in total. Of that about 20g is fat, not a brewer’s friend.
Yes, it’s translucent. 
Left for a week to see what happens to the BBQ flavour 
Not processed, oh no. 
Last week we tasted one each. Pen quite liked them, Mike not so much. They live up to their name. Definitely Korean BBQ flavoured. Definitely Seaweed and very, very thin. Each weighs less than 1g, roughtly 0.3g.
This weekend we decided to see what happened when we immersed them in water. One thin each in a ‘mash’ (thermos flask) at about 67C for an hour, boiled for 15 minutes and left in room temperature water for a week.
The boiled one smelled of seaweed whilst boiling but the intensity dropped after 10 mins. There was plenty of flavour in the remaining water though.
The mash seemed less successful with less flavour in the liquid. We’ll have to wait to seee what happens to the one in the bottle of 20C water.
As research we contacted a couple of breweries known to make seaweed beer. One, Portsmouth Brewery from Maine, replied and offered some useful advice and information. Thanks Maxine. She gave us an idea of quantity to use (26g/L towards the end of the boil) and a description of the flavours in the final beer. She advised to keep the hops bittering low too.
What are we going to brew? Probably our basic Magnum Blonde with a higher salt contribution, mininal bitterness and a typical FG. Hopefully this will balance to salt, bitterness and sugar with the umami from the seaweed. Intially we’re thinking of aiming for about 5g/L thin at the end of the boil (5-10 minutes). We’re assuming a 5:1 ratio of the mass between wet and dry seaweed. It’s a guess based on our hops.
Depending on the 20C water test we might ‘dry hop’ the beer to get the BBQ flavour too. We’re going to have to buy more of them as we don’t have enough.