Quite a departure from what we normally do but my good friend Mark Hamzy has been playing with using Jester King’s mixed culture in many places, including making hot sauce!  Mark shared with me his first small batch and it was a resounding success. Full of hatch and smokey flavor, noticeable sour bite; oh and hot!  Mark asked me, how can we make it bigger this time?

Why not do 5 gallons and age it in a whiskey barrel?  Neither of us had done this before and we didn’t exactly have a recipe.  Our best guess was to come up with a ratio of hatch roasted chilis to beer and yeast.  We brewed up a smoked-malt base beer, about 4 gallons, unhopped and targeting 1.040.  While the wort was boiling we worked on de-skinning and blending up roughly two cases of freshly roasted hatch chilis.

After we’d collected enough chili we would mix in a couple ounces of fresh wort, some of the mixed culture and then pour into the barrel via a funnel.   We’ll age this combination for many months, checking on it as we go, topping it off with both fresh mixed culture and wort to ensure we get it sour enough.

Wunder Hatch