Winter is coming, level up your beers!

With fall around the corner and the winter not far behind, the lighter beers you enjoyed during the summer - Wiltenburg lager, Hopfenweisse, Hazy Daze may become less appealing as we start to long for darker and more intense beers.

Enhancing Brew Packs

For MiniBrewers, it’s all about a category of their own, a kind of freestyle.  It often has a dark and more intense colour and can contain spices that make you flare up from the inside! The spices, which are also used in mulled whisky, are typically "wintry" and include cloves, cacao, liquorice and aniseed. 

We want to encourage our MiniBrewers to be creative in brewing their beers, we do however understand that it can be daunting to go from brewing beer using our brew packs to creating your own recipes from scratch. Therefore we made two brews ourselves that have a simple enhancement of our Sputnik and Stapzwan’s Porter Brew Pack, that you can also easily do at home!

 #1 -Sputnik, Russian Imperial Stout with an Irish twist

What do you need to create this recipe:

• MiniBrew Sputnik Brew Pack.  €32,99  €24,75 Special Promotion
• Whiskey or bourbon
• Cacao nibs (toasted/roasted) 7g/L.
• Big tea-infuser or a hop spider

How to brew

Preparations (24h)

• Roast/toast your cacao nibs in an oven for ~10 minutes at 125℃, make sure to keep an eye on them because every oven is different and you don’t want to scorch them!
• Let the nibs cool down to room temperature and soak them in whisky or bourbon for 24 hours in a closed tray. 

Brewing

• Start your brewing process by scanning the QR code of the Sputnik Brew Pack and follow the instructions until the fermentation starts.
• Once the keg is set and ready to start fermentation, sanitise thoroughly and add the nibs into the tea-infuser / hop sider.
• Don’t just add them to the keg because the nibs float and you won’t be able to remove them!
• Leave the nibs for ~5 days and carefully remove them from the keg. You can always reduce or increase the amount of time depending on the intensity of the flavour you want to extract.

Other bits

You can add the nibs whenever you want! Don’t feel restricted by our recipe, but try what you think is best. Get more inspiration about using toasted cacao nibs from Pro brewers here.

:

#2 -🥥 Stapzwan Coconut Porter

What do you need to create this recipe:

• Stapzwan Porter Brew Pack.  €29,99  €22,50 Special Promotion
• Coconut flakes (biological is preferred, make sure it doesn’t contain sulfur)

How to brew

Preparations (20min)

• Roast/toast your coconut flakes between 120-150 °C for 5 - 10 minutes, it’s again important to keep an eye on the roasting process as every oven is different and these flakes can burn in an instant. 

Brewing

• Start your brewing process by scanning the QR code  of the Porter Brew Pack and follow the instructions till the boiling process is taking place.
• Once the boiling process has finished and the cooling is starting, remove the top cover from the mash tun and add the roasted coconut via the hole in the middle of the mash tun as shown in the picture above.

Other bits

You can add the flakes whenever you want! Don’t feel restricted by our recipe, but try what you think is best. Get more inspiration about using toasted coconut flakes via Homebrewtalk here

The ‘prepare for winter’ bundle

If you have been inspired and want to try both of the recipes, we’ll offer a limited bundle of Winter Beers Giving you a €20 discount. €62,98  - €42,98 Special Promotion. That's an additional 10% discount on the bundle. Use the following code at check-out prepareforwinterbeer 

We hope you enjoyed this Winter Beer update and look forward to hearing which you prefer or what's you've in mind in the comments below.