Hazelnut Brown

[imperialipa]

Thinking of infusing Hazelnut into one of our Brown Ales.

I have never worked with nuts in beer before. I understand that the high oil/fat content in raw nuts makes it hard to use.

What are all of you out there using for Hazelnut flavored beers? Extracts only?

Curious too as to the ratio per bbl you would recommend.

Thanks!

[gitchegumee]

Search...

Search on hazelnuts. I remember a few threads on nut usage and even a few on hazelnuts specifically.

[BNABrewing]

I did a beer with walnuts last year - a particularly fatty nut - which took a lot of hand processing on my part to be suitable for brewing. I essentially lightly roasted them and then pressed them while still warm to remove as much oil content as possible. I then repeated that three times (the amount of fat is seemingly endless). I then added them into the mash so as any remaining fats would hopefully be stuck in the mash bed and left behind. I had no problems with rancidity or oil slicks in the beer. This process is extremely labour intensive and takes forever, but the beer was worth it. As an fyi you will need A LOT of nuts to make any kind of flavour impact in your beer! When all said and done i had about 30 kg's or so for a 10hL brew. I would do way more next time, however the price of the fresh nuts (was originally 60kg before processing) + time spent processing proved to be a burden. I'm sure someone has a better way than this.

A thing to keep in mind: if using real nuts, you pose a serious risk to anyone with a nut allergy and must do a full CIP on anything the nuts have come into contact with (all brew vessels, lines, heat exchangers, tanks etc) before doing another brew on the system. It should also be made VERY visible to customers prior to them purchasing or consuming it!

Hope that gives you any kind of help.

Liam