So people have been asking about this ghost pepper beer that I brewed for the Making Dad With Chip and Zach.
First of all – BE CAREFUL WHEN BREWING WITH HOT PEPPERS! HANDLE THEM WITH EXTREME CAUTION! HANDLE YOUR WORT WITH EXTREME CAUTION AFTER FERMENTATION.
Last year, I grew some ghost peppers in the back yard. I got a few, shipped some off to a friend, and dried two out. I hung them up on string in the corner of the kitchen, so no little fingers would touch them. Chip Dolce, of the Making Dad Show asked if I was ever going to brew with them. I said I would, as long as I came up with a decent recipe to work with them. So after lots of thinking, I decided that a Mexican Cerveza would be a good choice. I sought out some Mr. Beer kits. I combined multiple kits to make the beer a little stronger, and hook up with a 2.5 gallon recipe or so. So two ghost peppers in the brew, and the name came about of TOO HOT MAMA.
That is when my thinking began to go as wild as my fermentation. Later that night, I stopped down to check on my fermentation. Here is what I posted on Facebook:
“Glad I stopped down to check on the Too Hot Mama fermentation. It was bubbling out of the airlock. Must have been ONE of the ghost peppers trying to do dastardly deeds.”
If I hadn’t stopped down, my basement would have been a mess with ghost pepper wort, and the Too Hot Mama would have been my wife….but for the anger reasons. 
I quickly rigged up a blow tube setup as shown below. Before the fermentation was done, the growler was cloudy with chunks of wort and pepper seeds in it.
So back to the crazy thinking. I took some home grown chili peppers and soaked them in tequila. Ten of those peppers went into my first variant bottling ever. I floated them in there and changed those bottle names to TOO HOT MAMA – MSHW. What is MSHW you may ask? My Smoking Hot Wife. This is a tribute to that minister who did a NASCAR prayer before the race and thanked God for his smoking hot wife (search it on youtube….worth the watch).
Well, Too Hot Mama, and the variant rang in at 5.6%. Don’t think this ghost pepper beer is a session beer though……although it is quite tasty. Pair it with Doritos, chicken wings, or chili and you are on the right track!
Want to hear what Chip and Zach think of it? Check out http://makingdadshow.com and check out episode 27 (being released on 10/26/15)
https://untappd.com/b/scoppa-brewing-co-too-hot-mama/1197218
https://untappd.com/b/scoppa-brewing-co-too-hot-mama-mshw/1197217
Did the peppers float in the wort during fermentation or sink to the bottom with the yeast sediment?
GREAT QUESTION! It was interesting. One stayed floating, the other one was with the trub. I think that perhaps one just “rehydrated” itself quicker and sank with the weight eventually.
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