I’m going to make a maple bacon bourbon stout.
You heard me.
Maple bacon bourbon stout.
I don’t need to explain myself. You know why.
The problem is getting the bacon flavor in the beer. There has been discussion on various forums, and some breweries (Garret Oliver of Brooklyn Brewery) have even made commercial examples. The main options tend to be smoking your own malt with bacon, using bacon bits, etc etc blah blah I WANT TO USE REAL BACON.
So, here’s my plan.
I’m going to put a slotted baking sheet over a regular flat baking sheet. I’m going to make some sort of awesome contraption of tin foil that will keep the bacon somewhat vertical. Like seats, for the bacon. I’ll take a picture when I get this going so that that makes sense. Then I’m going to bake the bacon at 400˚ (random choice of temperature) until it is super crispy. The hope is that this will cause the least amount of grease possible, while still making awesome bacon. For this first attempt, I’ll get normal bacon, not flavored with anything (like maple, pepper, whatever). I’ll also hope for thin bacon for this first attempt. Science!
Once it is super crispy, but NOT BURNT, I’ll break it up into smaller pieces, and soak it in some bourbon. Not sure what kind yet. I’m open to suggestions. The amount of bourbon will be determined by my stout recipe, which I haven’t written yet.
This vat, or at least jar of bourbon with bacon will sit in the fridge for a few weeks. I’m thinking I’ll do this tomorrow (Saturday, March 6th), and let it soak for 2-3 weeks. Hopefully any excess grease and fat will congeal and float to the top in the fridge. This will be skimmed away.
When the soaking is done, I’ll pour the liquid through a coffee filter. Probably two coffee filters. Twice. No fat, no chunks.
Then I’ll add this to the secondary fermentation.
Lastly, I will win.
Thoughts?
Starting a Brewery 
Sounds great PJ. Bacon in a Stout. You win.
A local restaurant did Bacon Flavored Bourbon in-house for a cocktail. The one thing I remember about the process was that they put it in the freezer at the end to separate the fat from the liquid. There was not a trace of greasiness left in the bourbon when I tried it.
If my suggestion works can I get a sample of your brew?? Pretty please,
Hoptrollop
I’ll have you know I thoroughly approve of this post.
Rock ON! Excited to hear how this turns out!
That’s quite a project to take on. I’m looking forward to all the updates during the process. You know there’s going to be extra bacon laying around the house. Win!
I don’t eat bacon, wouldn’t drink the beer, but I truly admire your determination.
Smuttynose made a Scotch Ale a few years ago (the recipe has since changed) that used an overabundance of smoked peat. It tasted like bacon, and since I don’t eat bacon I found the flavor to be repugnant, but I could see a bacon lover really enjoying it.
I think it’ll work great–the flavor of bacon is so strong that it’d have to make it into the final brew. If it isn’t quite strong enough, you could always try adding smoked peat or malts in a later batch to boost the flavor.
Also, is this going to be an Imperial Stout? Seems to me that the high abv would be important in preventing spoilage…
After I tweeted all of my method for bacon bourbon I read this and see you pretty much already know it. Oh well.
Hey let us (me) know how the bourbon comes out, especially if there’s some left over 🙂 Also, what kind of bourbon did you use?
The best filters for coffee are the Chemex filters. They tout their ability to remove the oils from high end coffee. This might be a good thing to run your bourbon and bacon through. They’re like $8 for 100.
Nice dude! I’ll check those out for sure. Thanks!
Here’s the chemex website:
http://www.chemexcoffeemaker.com/Filters.htm
How about Maple bacon from Singleton’s ? I could bring out a pound or two….
I like bacon but i dont think id want a bacon flavored beer. Probably just me though.
dude this sounds great! can’t wait to hear the results
It sounds like you really want to use actual bacon and thats cool. In a pinch you could use liquid smoke too.