Cucumber Cerveza - Barley The Brew Pup August Recipe
The weather is warm and the days are long. Oh sweet summertime... The summer season comes with the opportunity for outdoor activities like hiking, swimming, and my least favorite activity of all.. yard work! This dreaded chore inspired me to brew what we like to refer to as a "lawn mower beer." This is a beer that is crisp and refreshing, usually has a lighter body and lower ABV, and can be enjoyed after a gruesome day of mowing the lawn in that oppressive summer sun. And there is no better lawn mower beer than a light colored, crisp Mexican Cerveza. However, I have refined puppy tastes, and I wanted to kick my brew up a notch. I decided the perfect ingredient to give my cerveza a clean and refreshing bite was... fresh cucumbers! Reminiscent of Cigar City's Summer Seasonal, Cucumber Saison, this beer is a surprisingly fantastic brew, and one you won't want to miss. So join me as we brew up our Cucumber Cerveza! The Recipe:
- 1 can of Mr. Beer Aztec Mexican Cerveza
- 1 pack of BrewMax Smooth DME
- 3 medium cucumbers
As always, don't forget to get yourself a brewing assistant if you are like me and are missing those helpful things fondly referred to as opposable thumbs! I like to call my assistant "the upright."
To get started, I had my brewing assistant bring 6 cups of fresh water to a near boil in our handy dandy brew pot. He then took it off the heat and added the Mexican Cerveza Brewing Extract and the pack of Smooth DME. The Upright always manages to spill a little, and I undoubtedly always try to sneak a taste of the gooey goodness. The Upright always catches me, but it is so delicious you can't blame a pup for trying!
After the big oaf and his extremely useful meat hooks (aka hands) thoroughly mixed the wort, I instructed him to carefully pour the wort into our sanitized Mr. Beer Little Brown Keg. He then topped it all off to the two gallon mark with clean, cold water and aerated the wort with a clean, sanitized brew spoon. Once we took a hydrometer reading (I had to put on my spectacles to get a proper original gravity reading) and ensured the wort was at proper pitching temperature (66-68°F), I did the honor of pitching the supplied packet of brewers yeast.
S
pecial Instructions After 1 week of fermentation in your keg, you are going to add your 3 medium cucumbers! Start the preparation by peeling the cucumbers and then slicing them in to roughly 1/4" rounds (like what you would do to put them on your salad). Next, stuff your hop sack with all those cucumber rounds (it is going to be quite full, but don't worry!) and tie the top into a firm knot.
Place the full hop sack into a pot of 6-8 cups boiling water. You only want to leave your hop sack in the boiling water for 1 minute. Carefully remove the hop sack from the water and place it into a sanitized bowl to cool for about 5 minutes. Once your sanitized cucumbers have cooled, gently lower the full hop sack into the fermenter and ferment for another 1-2 weeks.
Disclaimer:
- Don't give your pups beer…WE DON'T! Everything you see here is staged for entertainment purposes.
- Sanitization is very important to us and we recommend following all of Mr.Beer's recommended sanitization process. A much more thorough write up, including sanitization practices, can be found online on the Smoked Stout recipe page.
If you have enjoyed this homebrew write up, please check me out @BarleyTheBrewPup on Instagram. We update daily - follow me to see what the uprights have in store for me next!
