Greetings, and welcome to the first in our series of beer releases.
First off, a little back story. I’m Matt, and I’m the head brewer here at California Hot Sauce Solutions.
What? Hot sauce and beer? Yes, we do have a license to brew and sell beer along with all of our tasty hot sauces that we make daily.
I’m not really fond of the title Head Brewer, as we do things quite a bit differently here. Think of us more as a Commercial Home Brewery.
As a commercial home brewer, I’m more into sharing my love of flavors and off-the-wall ideas that I couldn’t get away with at a traditional brewery. Thankfully our owners Tim and J are cool dudes and backed me up on this slightly crazy plan.
We’re going to release my beer recipes with every release of a new beer. I’m brewing very small (10–15 gallon) batches, which lets me brew more often and try out a lot more unique stuff. For the releases, I’ve scaled down the recipes to 5 gallons so all of our homebrew fanatics can come and enjoy a pint—and if they love it, try making a batch at home.
First Up: “West Coast Red Scare”
(You have to read that in your best deep movie trailer voice.)
The Red Scare is a cross between a West Coast IPA and a Red Ale. I wanted a beer with a strong hop presence and an intense color.
My muse on this one is Tim. In the kitchen, Tim has been getting ready for the next round of Morel Revival, a fantastic Morel Mushroom-based sauce that involves an infusion of rose petal tea. Running with this idea, I spun up the beer.
To get the really deep red glow I wanted, I picked up a cold brew drip coffee maker and a food-grade peristaltic pump. The day before brew day, I used organic hibiscus and cold-brewed a hibiscus tea. The pump looped the tea back into the upper reservoir, forming a continuous drip for 24 hours. This stripped all the red out of the hibiscus, leaving a pale pink petal mash behind. The tea color was somewhere between ruby and total darkness.
For the best beers, you’re going to want fresh ingredients. I reached out to my friends at SoCal Brew Supply, who can pull grain and mill to order. If you’re local and don’t want to pay outrageous fees for stale grain online, it’s worth checking them out.
Recipe (Scaled to 5 Gallons)
Grains
11 lbs. Maris Otter
1 lb. Munich Malt
1 lb. Crystal 60L
0.5 lb. Cara Red
0.5 lb. Wheat Malt
Hops
Magnum (60 min): 1.5 oz
Centennial (30 min): 1 oz
Simcoe (15 min): 1 oz
Amarillo (10 min): 1 oz
Citra (Whirlpool at 170°F for 20 min): 2 oz
Dry Hop (Day 5–7): 1.5 oz Citra + 1.5 oz Simcoe + 1.5 oz Amarillo
Yeast
Wyeast 1056 (American Ale) or SafAle US-05
Ferment at 66–68°F
Now, the week I brewed this we were getting that lovely 85+ degree weather. And since I’m a commercial home brewer without vast resources for temperature control, I had to punt on yeast and went with Lutra Kveik, which can tolerate San Diego weather.
I’ve found over the years when beers flop, it’s usually because I blindly followed a recipe and didn’t adjust for conditions in my kitchen or brew space.
Directions
Brew in a bag. This recipe doesn’t use DME or LME—it’s all grain. My kettle is designed for hot sauce, so I brew like the Vikings did, in a mesh bag I bought off Amazon.
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Place all grain into mesh brew bag.
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Mash at 152°F for 60 min. The grain will drop your temp noticeably. Start strike water at 165–170°F, add grain, and monitor.
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Sparge and collect about 6.5 gallons pre-boil. If your pot isn’t that large, use what you’ve got and bring the volume back up to 5 gallons in your fermenter.
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Boil for 60 minutes, following the hop schedule.
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Add hibiscus and whirlpool for 5 minutes.
The magic step:
Use 2 oz dried hibiscus. Make tea with about 4 cups of water and add it at whirlpool. Use a brew bag or diffuser so the petals don’t enter the fermenter. Or, for extra flair, run it repeatedly through a drip cold brewer or use a cheap food-grade pump to loop it.
Fermentation
Chill rapidly to about 68°F (or 75–80°F for Lutra). Ferment until complete, usually 1–2 weeks. Move to secondary—expect a lot of trub. Check color and add up to two cups more hibiscus tea if you want a deeper red. Add dry hops, hold 5–7 days, then cold crash. Use Biofine Clear to brighten the color. Keg or bottle, give it time to carbonate, and enjoy.
Notes and Tips
Keep an eye on temperature. Track how much the grain drops your mash temp so you can dial in your strike water for your setup.
For chilling, before I picked up a wort chiller, I’d set the hot pot in a sink full of ice. Later I started reducing the boil volume slightly and topping off with ice made from filtered water. It saves time and hits your target ABV.
When you pull the mash out of the pot, don’t squeeze it. That can cause off flavors. Let it drain naturally over a colander as you heat to boil.
And during your 60-minute boil, you should be drinking a beer. Clean a little, but don’t go far—the pot is watching you, waiting for you to get distracted so it can boil over and wreck your floor.
Final Pour
I hope you found some of this useful, or at least entertaining. Come on in and try some hot sauce, and wash it down with one of our commercial home-brewed $5 pints.
We’re open Monday through Saturday, closing at 7pm (5pm on Mondays).