marlier

Recipes 

So I made a big beer -- a wee heavy, OG of 1.080. After mashing out, I added another 6 gallons of water to the same grain, and basically did a very large batch sparge, which gave me about 4.5 gallons of additional wort on the second running, with an OG of around 1.020. That's pretty low, but there's still a lot of flavor even at that gravity. During the boil, I added 3 pounds of honey to the second runnings, which brought the gravity up to about 1.056, then topped off to 5 gallons with water for a true OG of 1.047.

So, basically, I've got 5 gallons of honey ale/mead-like beverage. It's dry -- after primary, the gravity is 1.002 -- but because of the use of the second running as a base, that's deceptive. The honey is 100% converted, and is most of the fermentables, so it's actually the equivalent of mixing a beer at 1.010 or so with a mead at 0.985. In other words, it doesn't taste nearly as dry as it sounds.

Anyway, I'm going to leave half of the batch alone, but I'm thinking of spicing the remainder, giving it a bit of a holiday flair. Has anyone had a spiced mead before? Anyone made a spiced holiday-style beer and have thoughts on how much of the "normal" spices might be right if I'm going to split off 2.5 gallons? (By normal spices, I mean cinnamon/clove/nutmeg/etc -- the winter warmer type things.)

Thanks!

- Ian

Skyforger

Recipes 

If I'm unsure of spice amounts, I make a tincture of the spices in a little vodka, then after two weeks of steeping or so, add that in small quantities. A bit of shaking or stirring and you know how much flavor you added, no wait or guesswork.