Spice Beer

Dry and spicy yet hop-forward, this lemongrass-laced saison from Oedipus in Amsterdam recently took home its third World Beer Cup medal.

Exotic but familiar, the tropical plant lemongrass is far from being one of the traditional beer ingredients … yet its flavor and aroma fit right in with the others.

Courtesy of Luc Lafontaine of Godspeed in Toronto, this unusual IPA recipe represents a fusion of influences. (It also includes tips for extracting flavor and aroma from green tea without unwanted tannins.)

Spice beers can be polarizing, but the intriguing flavors create exciting avenues of exploration for adventurous brewers. We asked a few of our favorite brewers to share some of their favorites.

So, how do you make a spiced beer? “Brew a beer and add spices.” If only it were that simple! Spice opens up an enormous range of flavors to us, and Josh Weikert shows you how to deploy various spices to get something you’re going to love drinking!

Spice in beer is nothing new, but as farmers create new peppers for market, brewers are busy trying to figure out how to incorporate them into lagers and ales. Matt Brophy talks about the spicy inspiration behind Flying Dog Brewery’s “The Heat” series.

Formulating, sampling, describing, reformulating, sampling again—the lessons Forbidden Root’s BJ Pichman learned perfecting first Forbidden Root and later Fernetic are equally useful when making a beer with just a few spices or, in fact, one with none.

Josh Weikert takes you on a rapid-fire journey through a range of spices and herbs that enhance, augment, imitate, and/or intensify both traditional beer flavors and beer-adjacent flavors that you might want to work into your recipes.