Flavoured Beer, Herbs / Spices

Flavoured Beers with Herbs and Spices a very wide range of style of beer where herbs, spices or culinary ingredients are added to a base beer either during or after fermentation. The base beer can be anything from a light pale ale through to a heavy stout. The type of ingredients being added can be just about anything, herbs and spices could be elderflower, coriander seed, ginger or chilli. For culinary ingredients these could include coffee, vanilla, chocolate or even fortified spirits. The additional ingredients can be added as whole items or processed in some way such as extracts, juices or concentrates. So with the variety of base beer, the additional ingredient bring used and how it is applied it soon becomes clear that there are lots of possibilities. The end beer is hugely variable in taste and appearance, such as a spicy ginger IPAs, vanilla milds, sweet chipotle chocolate porters, whisky infused barley wine or just about anything you can imagine.

To classify a beer as a Flavoured Beer the additional fruit needs to dominate the end product in terms of appearance, aroma or taste. Those beers where there is only a slight presence will be classified as whatever the base beer is.

Although it appears that Flavoured Beer in cask ale is a recent invention it does in fact date back many years. Hops were known to be in the UK by the early in the 15th century, it is not difficult to imagine that multiple other ingredients were used both before and after their introduction.