Flamin’ Hot Homebrew: The beer made with Flamin’ Hot Cheetos™!
December 30, 2013: Boil 2.5 gallons of water. We are not steeping specialty grains this batch! Once the water is good and boiling, add 3.3 lbs light liquid malt extract (I used Breiss Golden Light) and 3.3 lbs amber liquid malt extract (I used Breiss Sparkling Amber). Boil this for thirty minutes.
“As a registered dietician and food scientist, I can attest to this one objective fact: Flamin’ Hot Cheetos™ are the best snack ever invented. Delicious and also enriched with 5 B vitamins, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos™ are mankind’s greatest culinary achievement. For breakfast, lunch, dinner, or anything in between, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos™ are always a smart choice!” -Tyler Horstman, Dietitian.
So after your wort has been boiling for 30 minutes, add a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos™. The bag I used was 9.5 oz for some totally inscrutable reason; it’s not like it’s an even metric number or anything (269.3g?). I suppose 9.5 oz is just the size that test markets proved to be the most snacktacular? So that’s how I settled on 9.5 oz for this recipe. I crushed them up a little bit before I added them, but they all ended up dissolving anyway.
After your Flamin’ Hot Cheetos™ have been boiling for 40 minutes and the wort has turned SUPER NEON ORANGEY RED, add 1 oz Willamette Hops. Boil for 20 more minutes and then cool your wort. Add 2.5 gallons of water to the mixture, and pitch your yeast. I used Wyeast 1332 Northwest Ale for its low attenuation, low ester levels (to accentuate the spices), and high flocculation. Let this bad boy sit for two weeks and then bottle!
As a side note, this was the first beer I decided to measure with a hydrometer; O.G. of only 1.044!
January 9, 2014: Primary fermentation is done, I re-racked this beer into a secondary because I wanted to get it off the lipids that were floating at the top like a friggin' oil spill.
Final gravity: 1.014. We're looking at an ABV of about 3.9%. Hopefully its lightness will accentuate the flamin' hott contribution.
Review Feb. 23rd, 2014: Well first off, I should have used more flamin’ hots. While the flavor is there if you look for it, you don’t really notice a flamin’ hot presence. If I were to make this beer again, I would double the amount of flamin’ hots used, and only leave them in for a few minutes in a grain bag so they do not dissolve into the beer. At the same time, I was pleased by how little the copious amount of fat in this beer really effected head retention. Even better, the beer has the perfect creamy consistency to it which may be attributable to the fat content. In a future batch, I would also use a higher attenuating yeast, I think something that fermented dryer would allow for more of the flamin’ hot spices to show through. The hops were perfect and I would not change them next time. Overall, this beer was better than I expected and paves the way for future snack-infused recipes!
