Winter is coming, as they say. Time to prepare for all the festive holiday drinking that goes so wonderfully with all that festive holiday grazing. Time to celebrate the bounty ahead of the long, cold nights.
My usual harvest ale depends on what kind of crop my garden has produced, but it includes some kind of squash or fall fruit, sometimes accented with a special spice blend. There are so many possibilities that I’ve often wished that I could brew many kinds of fall and winter beers, but then it just winds up being too much beer.
Yet, there is a way—a way to bring a wider range of seasonal flavors to your own beers, try out different combinations, and at the same time add some spectacle to the festivities.
Enter: the Renée.
Wait, Who’s Renée?
Well, if you’ve heard of Randall the Enamel Animal—the infusion device that Dogfish Head founder Sam Calagione developed back in 2002—then you’re close. (Renée’s like a little cousin.) Like Randall, Renée also infuses aroma and flavor into beer—but she’s less complicated, easier to use, and a fantastic piece of equipment for any homebrewery. In fact, you might already have one in your kitchen.
To better understand Renée, let’s first consider Randall. The Randall is a two-chamber device that infuses the flavors of hops, herbs, spices, breakfast cereal—or whatever is packed into those chambers—into the draft beer flowing through the device. “Basically,” Calagione says, “it’s a sophisticated filter system that allows the user to run draft beer through a chamber of whole-leaf hops, spices, herbs, fruit, etcetera, so that the alcohol in the beer strips the flavor from whatever you add and puts it in the beer.”
The first time I saw a Randall in action, it reminded me of a swimming pool filter—liquid goes in, and liquid comes out. In this case, beer goes in and comes out, but instead of clean pool water you get beer infused with whatever you want. Cool, right? My attempts to build one of my own over the years failed—hey, some of us are handier than others—and I’d all but given up.
That’s when I met Renée.
A few years back, I was pouring homebrew at Pike Brewing in Seattle, at an event that celebrated women in brewing. I had my pilsner and a dark, tart-cherry sour, while my friend Bri had her delicious cranberry witbier. She also brought Renée.
Essentially, the device is a French press—just like you’d use for coffee or tea. What made it a Renée is how Bri used it. She explained to me that it’s like a Randall, in that it infuses beer with various flavors—however, given that we were at a women’s beer event, it should have a better name. Hence, Renée.
Renée, in Action
I watched as Bri layered chamomile, dried flowers, a cinnamon stick, and her neighbor’s backyard honey into the Renée. She then poured some beer over the top, allowing it to mingle a few minutes before pressing down the plunger and gently pouring the beer into a glass. And voilà—the aroma carried hints of cinnamon and coriander, while I could taste the sharpness of the cranberry softened by touches of honey and flowers.
Throughout the evening, Bri switched up the infusions with various teas, spices, and local honeys. Tasting them along the way got me thinking of all the possibilities—what else could I infuse into my own beers? How often had I brewed large batches of fruit-and-spice beers, only to stop liking them after a few glasses—occasionally tasting like a Yankee Candle because I overdid the additions.
Renée, however, seemed like the perfect piece of equipment for prototyping flavor combinations and proportions—for bench testing, essentially. Except she’d be much more fun at parties.
I found my Renée at a local home-goods store, but a wide range of French presses are available online in assorted sizes, made from various materials. I chose a one-liter press with a glass container and a plastic frame, rather than a metal one.
My first experiment was an English porter, which I Renée’d with a few slices of habañero pepper, ground cacao nibs, and a broken cinnamon stick. It wasn’t my favorite, but it certainly wasn’t bad—and I was delighted to have only a liter of it, rather than five gallons.
One of my first hits involved a split vanilla bean and a splash of bourbon—and I found that if I put the bean and bourbon in an inch of beer, allowing that to sit for five to 10 minutes before adding the rest of the beer, the flavor was much more prominent.
Running with Renée
Another tip: Over-carbonate your beer a bit. You’re obviously going to lose some bubbles in this process, but you can compensate for some of that by starting with higher carbonation—and by pushing the plunger down slowly before it’s time to pour.
Have fun with it! At parties, I’ve offered beer Renée’d according to drinker’s choice, putting out various dried spices, herbs, and honey from which to choose.
Some other hits I’ve tried:
- freshly cracked coffee beans in stout
- peppercorns in West Coast IPA
- sliced and diced fresh Anaheim peppers in an American wheat beer
- fresh, crushed pineapple in blond ale, poured into a Tajin-rimmed shaker pint
Besides the fun of it, infusions with Renée have been invaluable for prototyping beers for competitions. What combinations work best? Which coffee and level of roast might work best with my stout? Ugandan vanilla or Tahitian? Which fruit tastes best with my habañero?
And let’s not forget hops—they’re excellent in the Renée. However, avoid pellet hops—they just don’t work—and stick to fresh or dried whole cones or leaves.
Otherwise, the possibilities are nearly limitless. Besides being fun at parties, trying different infusions in the Renée also makes a great activity for homebrew-club meetings.
To get started, I suggest brewing one of your staple beers—one that isn’t overly hoppy. An American wheat beer, a Belgian-style witbier (with or without the cranberry), a porter or stout, or even a cream ale works well with all kinds of spices, herbs, hops, or whatever else sounds good and might fit in the press. Visit a tea or spice shop to look for the freshest ingredients, smelling before you buy. Many roadside fruit stands sell local honeys, which have a surprising range of flavors and could be a tasty addition, for example, to a strawberry-kiwi ale.
You don’t even need homebrew to try it out. If you’re not sure what to brew, try experimenting with your favorite commercial craft beers and whatever ingredients you have on hand. Maybe you’re smashing some peppermint and honey into a dark ale, or—on a hot day—fresh jalapeño and crushed lime into some Mexican lager. Renée loves the winter holidays, of course, but she can be a friend year-round.
