Cedar Rapids Brewing Society

We need to rethink our plan to use the box of Amoretti flavorings at the festival to dose individual beers (let the customers pick a flavor). I was working with my bottle of Blackberry extract over the weekend and this stuff is seriously concentrated. The little bottles of extract recommended dosage in a drink is 0.01% - 0.02%!!! In my 5 gallon batch of wheat beer, that came out to 1.7 gms - about 8 drops. It will be impossible to measure out that small a quantity into a 4 oz beer.

The jars of infusions are also strong - recommended dosage is 0.5% - 1%. Again, very hard to dose a 4 oz beer pour with it.

If we are willing to try, we could see if we could dilute them enough to make some syrups that we could then eye dropper/pipette into a sample of beer, similar to the pump bottle of syrup that we got in our NHC swag bag??

We could still use them to make various kegs of sodas.

How did the wheat taste after that dosage?

Wouldn't have been a fair test, as the wheat beer had already been infused with fresh blackberries and Tazmanian pepperberries. And, I put the drops of extract into my corn sugar solution to carbonate my beer.

I'm willing to experiment with this. Will pick up a 6 pack of 312 or Boulevard and see what I can do with them.

Exercising a little math, I am sure we can come up with a dilution that we can add, say a quarter teaspoon of dilution to a 2 oz sample of beer.

If we had a keg of Wheat Beer, we could call it Name Your Wheat.

But, that could create another problem. We will be mixing ingredients on site, without a coded kitchen...etc. etc.

I am afraid the Food Code might put the kibosh on this.

This is pretty similar to adding syrups to sno-cones and the like. Would a kitchen be required for that? Perhaps a call to the inspector would clarify the issues. After all, the inspector will be on site to check the food vendor.

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Yes, and if we were to set up a snow cone stand, for sale, we would be inspected by the Linn County Board of Health and would need their approval. Not a coded kitchen per se, but you have to show that your equipment and processes are sanitary.

Two or three years ago, we made up pretzel necklaces to sell. Because they were not assembled in a coded-kitchen, we could not sell them. BUT, we were allowed to give them away. I suppose it is OK to be a threat to the public health, as long as you don't charge for it.

Just curious as to how this would be different than running a beer through a Randal with fruit in it, which is done all the time at homebrew festivals??

But, it wouldn't hurt to ask either Steven or Tim, who deal with the Health Inspectors all the time when vending out in public.

Tim does mot think it would need to be inspected because we are not selling it.

I was thinking of making syrups out of the infusions and putting them into pump bottles like these:

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N7XNY5T

I don't think those would work. I could be wrong. Aren't bottles like those used for more viscous liquids?

It may follow the some route as the pretzels, in that we can't charge for it, but we can give it away.

It is going to come down to the decision of the field inspector, and if the inspector takes notice as to how we are dispensing the flavoring. I am betting they may not even take notice.

I am wondering if our beer falls under the same rules, while we charge for admission, we do not charge for individual beers. And, given we are only allowed to serve samples - the overall risk to the public is minimal.

Right, has an inspector ever looked at the beer dispensing? Typically they just check the food vendor, unless they notice something obvious like the pretzels on the front table.

TappedOut wrote:Right, has an inspector ever looked at the beer dispensing? Typically they just check the food vendor, unless they notice something obvious like the pretzels on the front table.

Inspectors never look at beer dispensing equipment.

carrisr wrote:A polite suggestion for naming beers: please don't list your brewery name first on the app as it is confusing. At the Rivers Edge fest we had 2 to 3 beers that all stared with the same name and people thought that was the name of the beer, so we had to keep asking "which one"? Also, there's limited space on the cards we make.

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I will maybe change. I have people that recognize my Slappy brand and try to go around drinking anything called Slappy something.

Lets proceed with doing something with the flavorings. If have inspector issues, we pull it. I don't see this as an issues since we are not selling it. If we needed to worry, they would have already been inspecting all our bars and stuff.