OK,
Here is my HANDS-ON Experience. I brewed this beer twice according to the OP's original recipe. But both times I scraped out the insides, per a post instructions later in the thread. It was good, just needed more of a punch.
1) Used 5 jalapenos in the brew, scraped the insides and roasted in the oven. The beer had a very mild taste of jalapeno & it was no-way hot.
2) Used 9 jalapenos in the brew. Did the same thing per instructions and it was nicer............. but not hot enough. Most of the heat came through in the aftertaste. The beer is excellent though.
I took the beer to our local brewery/restaurant that just opened in town. The owners are really nice and they've even given a presentation to our brew club. I brought over a growler of the stuff but wasn't expecting much. They each had 1 glass, then another, then another. They quickly emptied the growler between the 2 of them. Both commented how good it was!
Now I just received a commercially available jalapeno beer from Weed California.............. some of my friends (that tried mine) brought me it...................... it's VERY hot. The aroma is over the top jalapenos, it almost blew my head off just from the smell. The beer underneath is not as good as sundowner's, but I LOVED all the jalapeno's.
So now I'm ready to try this again. I could up the count on the roasted jalapenos, but I'm thinking back to my cooking 101 and remembering the heat is all in the seeds. What if I use 9 jalapenos, slice 'em, roast 'em & just leave the seeds in? Will this be drinkable?
When & if to add Jalapenos to:
1) Mash
2) Boil
3) Primary
4) Secondary
Please help, oh you beer gurus. I'm just thinking of trying Sundowner's original recipe without the scrape!?
I like it hot! Fire!
My Mexican Step-Father makes a salsa that is HOT!!! It's full of seeds. 3 days after you try it, you're still burping up the hot stuff!!!
Yup. Read back a few pages and it's all there. The heat is in the seeds.
The jalapeno seeds and core are what add the heat. If you strip the insides, you will eliminate the heat.
I brewed this using the original recipe, except for the hops, a few weeks ago and thought I would share my experience. I like spicy things but was a little scared about a spicy beer. I added 4 jalapeños to the boil. The beer had a nice little kick after the boil. Waited 10 days moved to secondary and it still had about the same spice. So far so good. Added 3 more jalapeños to secondary and tasted about 4 days later. Holy crap! It was like drinking a liquid jalapeño. Way to hot. Pulled the jalapeños out of the secondary and let it sit for about another week or so. After bottling the hotness went down a lot and was drinkable. Tried one last night after about 1.5 weeks in bottle and it is very very yummy. Just the slightest spice in the aftertaste. So far this is my favorite brew I have done.
For those of you worry about the spiciness of the beer it is not that bad and as time goes it gets better.