spice and beer

[Dmp]

Is it suicide to add my spices at the boil and then let it sit for the fermentation (roughly 5-7 days) and then rack the beer off?

[MikeB]

Are they whole spices (cinnamon stick, whole cloves...) or just powdered? Are you adding them at the beginning of the boil or at knockout? I don't think the spices will be detrimental to fermentation, but you will probably lose some of the aroma through your airlock or blow off tube.

I usually add a conservative amount of ground spice at 5 min left in the boil, so that the spice gets mixed into the wort. I'll then adjust the the spicing post fermentation. I do this in the keg, but used to do this in the bottling bucket in my pre-kegerator days.

[Evan B]

I've found that spices are best added after the boil. I've always had the best results adding them after fermentation, often in a secondary

[captain carrot]

I'd agree with adding spices at the tail end of the boil (last 5 min or so). +1 on being conservative with the spices. You can always add more but you can't remove them once you've added too much unless you blend in another batch to dilute it. One way of adding spice character is by soaking them in vodka. You can use this liquid to adjust your spice levels at bottling/kegging. Randy Mosher does a better job explaining this in his book Radical Brewing.

[MikeB]

Good point on using vodka to extract the essential oils of most spices. I may try that with the pumpkin beer we have cold conditioning.

[HighCountry]

Is it suicide to add my spices at the boil and then let it sit for the fermentation (roughly 5-7 days) and then rack the beer off?

Nope. Add the spices at knockout and that will keep the delicate aromatics. which spices do you plan to use?

[Dmp]

I did some research last night guys. Looks like Bugeater is a pretty solid brewer, and has a few great spice beers. I am going to follow his lead. I am making a gingerbread ale...I will soak

1.5 oz of candied ginger
.5 whole stick of cinomonn
.5 tsb of ground nutmegg
.5 vanilla bean stick
along with a pinch of cloves

I plan on letting this sit in 6oz of the blended whiskey/scotch (which is pretty sweet) from trader joes.

at bottling i will mix this along with priming sugar (since i bottle) and enjoy!

How does that sound?

[MikeB]

What's the base beer? Maybe this is obvious , but I'd recommend splitting the vanilla bean before soaking.

I'm also anal (yes I typed that) enough to put a measured amount of the scotch mixture into a pint of beer to see how it tastes before I dump the whole lot in.