Caramel Corn Brew

In a recent homebrew swap I received a couple pounds of Peruvian sprouted corn. The question became "What to make with this stuff?" I could chew it up, spit it into a gourd, let it naturally ferment and make Chica. There's beers that have corn like flavors such as Cream Ales, and some Mexican Lagers. However, with such a unique ingredient, I could not allow myself to brew a standard beer, and I thought that people probably don't want to drink anything that was mashed with my saliva so I came up with the idea of brewing a beer with the Caramel Corn flavor.  Caramel malt is a common flavor so I figure combined with a bit of corn, why not Caramel Corn? Click for Recipe Before I could brew, I had to try out my new milling process. I have had a basic Corona mill for some time and although I can usually pay the boy to do the grinding, manual milling is a pain in the butt and can result in your arm falling off your body when brewing a big beer requiring lots of grain. Solution - a 1/2" drive 10 Amp drill from the tool discount store for $30. This sucker has enough torque to grind stones. A little cardboard around the grinding face to direct the grain and just watch it go! The Corona doesn't give a perfect grind but it works good enough for me and I manage 75% efficiency since I follow the school of 'Grind it 'til you're scared'. If it looks like there might be too much dust I can always toss in a few rice hulls into the mash to help. I decided that I couldn't really have a Caramel Corn beer without Popcorn involved. Right into the mash with the grain. The corn made for a lot of powder when crushed so I vorlaufed a couple gallons before starting my sparge to help set the grain bed and filter out the particulate matter. This being only 9 lbs of grain I used my 5 gal Igloo setup instead of my larger 60qt cube cooler. It was dark by the time I got around to brewing so I did the mash procedure in the kitchen. The wife was out so I got away with it. Your basic three tier sparge setup. I took approximately 1 quart of the first runnings, added 1/2 lb of brown sugar to it, and set it to boil slowly on the stove until it was reduced by half. This gave it an intense caramelized flavor and was then added back to the main boil. The stove is good enough to heat the liquor to sparge temps, but I woudn't be able to get more than 3 or 4 gallons boiling on it so I boiled in my converted keg out on the patio watching my boil with a flashlight. My recipe originally called for the addition of corn syrup. I had purchased a bottle of the dark corn syrup but found the taste a bit too much like molasses and was afraid of creating too dark a flavor when combined with everything else. I dug through the cupboards and fridge looking for a sugar replacement for this to meet my target gravity and came across a jar of butterscotch ice cream topping that had to have been at least two years old. I would probably never add it to a regular brew but I think the buttery goodness is what will help make the Caramel Corn flavor. Into the kettle it went! For the extra dollop of buttery goodness, I chose the Wyeast Ringwood yeast strain. Even though it was an XL pack, I made a starter. You can't go wrong by getting the yeast active and happy before pitching. The one on the left is the Ringwood. The other on the stir plate is White Labs California Ale for my Annual New Years Eve brew - Grandfather Frost Russian Imperial Stout. The beer is bubbling away. Can't wait to find out how it comes out. The initial taste was very caramel with a slight hint of burnt popcorn. ......stay tuned