New Illawarra Brewing Company beer features jalapeno chillies

With the smoked jalapeno porter, it’s more about the flavour than the heat.

Beers made with chillies are not all that unusual – some even come with a whole chilli in the bottle.

But most of them focus on the heat and the burning sensation of the chilli, which can make drinking the beer an unpleasant experience.

“If it hurts you to drink it then we’re really defeating the purpose,” said Illawarra Brewing Company’s boss Dave McGrath.

“With this you get the smell of it and then a little bit of heat on the tongue. But it’s not something you start drinking and think ‘why did I do this to myself?’.”

The aroma from the beer is similar to picking up a fresh chilli and smelling it. But it's at the back end, along with coffee notes from the porter.

There is a small amount of heat that comes in at the back end but it’s far from overwhelming.

The beer was the creation of brewer Tim Howard, who had to keys to the brewery and permission to experiment while Mr McGrath was overseas.

His inspiration was to make a beer with chilli that he enjoyed drinking.

“I just wasn’t happy drinking some of the chilli beers that are out there – it was just like drinking liquid burning chilli,” Mr Howard said.

“You want to accentuate the good flavours of the chilli and not just the heat. I wanted a beer that was going to accentuate the flavour but not overpower the beer. I wanted it to still be the essence of a porter, I didn’t want it to be a chilli beer.”

Mr Howard only used 2.5 grams of jalapenos per litre in what was a test batch of just one keg.

That one keg has already proven to be popular at the brewhouse – it was tapped on Saturday and it’s already more than half-empty.

But don’t fret if you’ve missed out – the feedback for the smoked jalapeno porter has been so good, Mr Howard will be making a much bigger batch soon.

Once they work out where they can source a whole load of jalapenos.