A Question About Spice.

[jojai]

Hey,
Just wondering, when adding spice, what is a good amount to add? Say for instance I add some cinnamon, would 1 stick service 10L or thereabouts? (Boil for 30 min I reckon...) Any good resource for working this sort of thing out?

Cheers,
Joseph.

 

[Kai]

How long is a piece of string? It'll depend on the spice, but the best rule of thumb is to add less rather than more. It is easy to overdo it, but if you don't add enough you can always add more or just enjoy the beer as it is and add more next time.

Can't help you with cinnamon though, sorry!

 

[bconnery]

Kai is spot on. It depends on the spice, the beer, the boil. Another way is to look at recipes around and go from there.

As far as cinnamon goes I used two sticks and a teaspoon of ground in a 21L spiced ale with some other spices and it took a few months to blend in. It tasted entirely of cinnamon after a few weeks, but became absolutely perfect after about 3 months.

 

[Hugo]

There was an article in the Sydney Morning Herald's "Good Living" about 6 months ago about the micro-brewery at St Peters. They made a "Cinnamon Girl" ale and the article included quantities of cinnamon per batch. I have a hard copy in my brew file at home. I'll have a look tonight if no-one's found it earlier. Once again, I think it supported the "less is more" theory.

I know there's a school of thought about boiling spices separately in small volumes of water and then adding it after the boil, but I don't have first hand experience.

If anyone's tried to base a brew on Monteith's Summer Ale (NZ) they may have some ideas.... a superb spiced beer.

cheers... Hugo

 

[bconnery]

I know there's a school of thought about boiling spices separately in small volumes of water and then adding it after the boil, but I don't have first hand experience.

That's what I did, kind of. It was a base of honey and water in a separate boil, then added after the boil.
I had looked around at a few recipes to determine mine and that's what many of them did so I tried it.

 

[jojai]

3 months, damn that's a long time for a beer to take to taste like a beer. I think following some recipes is probably the best idea to start with. Some nice vanilla beans could be a smooth addition to a pale - medium ale style imo. Cheers

 

[katzke]

3 months, damn that's a long time for a beer to take to taste like a beer. I think following some recipes is probably the best idea to start with. Some nice vanilla beans could be a smooth addition to a pale - medium ale style imo. Cheers

We tried to make a spiced cranberry ale. We made up the recipe after looking at several others. It took quite some time to mellow out. So if you do this just be prepared to let it set if the first taste is not what you like. Like a month before the second taste.

As a side note I was doing research on HSA and found a session with Charlie Papazion. He adds to 1-teaspoon cinnamon to the mash water. Cinnamon works as an anti-oxidant or something. He claims you can not taste it, probably because the oils are boiled off from being in the wort for so long. Coriander works also but I can not remember if he uses that also.

 

[Rod]

When I made my Hoegarrten

I add 25g coriander seeds cracked to a 23 litre batch.

Hope this helps

 

[Hugo]

There was an article in the Sydney Morning Herald's "Good Living" about 6 months ago about the micro-brewery at St Peters. They made a "Cinnamon Girl" ale and the article included quantities of cinnamon per batch. I have a hard copy in my brew file at home. I'll have a look tonight if no-one's found it earlier. Once again, I think it supported the "less is more" theory.

I know there's a school of thought about boiling spices separately in small volumes of water and then adding it after the boil, but I don't have first hand experience.

If anyone's tried to base a brew on Monteith's Summer Ale (NZ) they may have some ideas.... a superb spiced beer.

cheers... Hugo

Took a while to get back on this.... ratio mentioned in the article above was 80gms/200L beer. process was to boil spices separately, let cool and skim off oil. Added to drum immediately prior to bottling.

cheers.