Adding blackberry and mint to secondary

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Torchiest

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I'm planning on bottling my oatmeal stout tonight. I want to split off a portion of it and try some experimental flavors. I want to do up to a gallon with blackberry extract, and a half gallon with fresh mint leaves.

Here are my questions:

  • Do I need to rack to a secondary for the portion with blackberry extract, or can I just add it to my bottling bucket once I get down to a gallon or so remaining?
  • Do I need to somehow sanitize or sterilize the blackberry extract?
  • How would I best sanitize the mint? Boil it? Add it to some cheap vodka and dump that in?
  • Would I have contamination worries if I just put leaves into the secondary directly?
  • Is there anything else I'm failing to take into consideration?
 
Sounds interesting.
You can add the extract at bottling time. No worries there. And, no, you don't need to sanitize it - it should be fine.

The mint is another story. I would probably make a mint tea (boil and cool) and add that.
Vodka would also work.
I would not add mint leaves directly into the secondary bc you have no idea what's on the leaves.

good luck.
 
Well, these are organic mint leaves that are in a nice little plastic container, and they're quite fresh.
 
That doesn't mean anything, though. You can dryhop hops because they are a natural preservative themselves, but I don't think the same holds true for mint. I'd either steam them for a bit, or soak in a small amount of vodka. Wondering, too, if the vodka would help gets some of the flavors out of the mint (any of them alcohol-soluable?)
 
That's what I'm thinking. I bartend, and there's a drink called a mojito that uses mint. Normally, you use a pestle and muddle the mint, basically crushing it to get the oils to come out. You do this in a mixture of sugar and water, and all the flavor goes into the liquid. Since oil and water normally separate, and it comes out just fine, I don't see why there would be any problem with vodka getting the flavor into it.
 
-I don't mean to hijack but while we are on the subject-

BeanPot Brewery said:
Sounds interesting.
You can add the extract at bottling time. No worries there. And, no, you don't need to sanitize it - it should be fine.

If you wanted to add it to the secondary (which I do) is it ok just to dump it in there (4oz bottle from brew shop) without sanitizing some how?



I am also a bartender and hate making those damn mojito's but very familiar with that cocktail. I believe it would be best to muddle in water then boil (as said before) into a tea.Or dry the leaves to make it easier to make the tea.

This drying would also take away the bitter taste from the fresh green mint.

Strain. And add to wort or chill and add to secondary, yet that might water down your beer unless you could reduce this tea over a saucepan until you end up with a thick syrup like substance. Maybe even add sugar (hot water+sugart is simple syrup) help build a simple syrup like substance.

Good luck and let us know how it turns out.
 
Well, since it turns out my beer isn't ready for bottling, I'm going to try to make a mint tea/syrup tonight to tide myself over, and then refrigerate it until it's time to bottle, when I will bring it back to a boil before using it as my priming sugar for part of the batch. Thanks for the input!
 
Yeah like Tuck said, I would make a simple syrup. I would meter it out so that you know what the proportion is (sugarwise) and then just boil your mint leaves for a bit, pour it into a sterilized mason jar, lid it and let it cool. Use it as your primer. I have steeped the leaves in Vodka before, but what happened was the color at first was a beautiful bright green. But then it oxidized and turn an olive brown after a few days as I recall.
 
TUCK said:
I believe it would be best to muddle in water then boil (as said before) into a tea.Or dry the leaves to make it easier to make the tea.

This drying would also take away the bitter taste from the fresh green mint.

Strain. And add to wort or chill and add to secondary, yet that might water down your beer unless you could reduce this tea over a saucepan until you end up with a thick syrup like substance. Maybe even add sugar (hot water+sugart is simple syrup) help build a simple syrup like substance.

Good luck and let us know how it turns out.

zoebisch01 said:
Yeah like Tuck said, I would make a simple syrup. I would meter it out so that you know what the proportion is (sugarwise) and then just boil your mint leaves for a bit, pour it into a sterilized mason jar, lid it and let it cool. Use it as your primer. I have steeped the leaves in Vodka before, but what happened was the color at first was a beautiful bright green. But then it oxidized and turn an olive brown after a few days as I recall.

Well, I tried boiling it with some sugar, but I ended up boiling off too much flavor and aroma and the leaves turned brown. I saved the syrup, but it has almost no aroma or flavor four days later, so I'm not going to use it. Next time I may try it with some vodka or use mint extract.

I'm going to bottle 36-40 bottles of the stout normally, and then add about 2oz of blackberry extract to the last gallon or so and bottle whatever is left, which should be about 15 beers.
 
When you sanitize the mint Don't boil it. you'll ruin all the flavor. If you REALLY want to boil it. boil it in some vokda because alcohol has a considerably lower boiling point than water. Also the Alcohol in vodka will act as a better solvent and you'll draw more of the good stuff out of the mint. Just make sure you watch the temprature. Because once it starts to get hotter that means all the alcohol boiled out and the water is begining to boil.

Or what you can do is put the mint in acetone (nail polish remover) and let it sit for a day or so (keep out of sun) and then seperate the acetone from the leaves. Put the acetone in a jar. Toss the leaves. Evaporate out the acetone (keep away from sun) and then you will have very high strength mint extract which you then simply disolve in some vodka and then add the emerald green vodka to the beer.

Its safe so long as you evaporate all the acetone and you use an acetone that dosent leave a film when it evaporates. Also when evaporating the acetone don't do it in a place where there are sparks or fire or anything that could make sparks like an AC or fan.

I've done this with Salvia Divnorium which is in the sage family. And it should work with mint.

Good luck
 
Interesting idea. I know all about Salvia, and I know about the concentrated extracts, so I can see this working. The acetone thing freaks me out a little, but I MIGHT try that sometime. I won't be brewing another stout for a while, and I don't have any plans to add mint to any other beers, but I'll keep it in mind. Thanks.
 
I wanted to add, if you make a simple syrup there are two things to keep in mind. One is that you need to have a high ratio of fresh mint leaves to solution. The second is that you just bring it to a boil, drop in the leaves and then kill the heat. I have done this numerous times and it has quite a strong mint flavor. Course, the strain I have is quite potent. I reiterate though, my experience with the alcohol produced a good extract but it changed color rather rapidly and developed a funky taste. The reason you don't see this with commercial extracts is because they drive off the volatiles and then distill them so there is no Clorophyll or other stuff really. So I would make it up a day or so before brewing.
 
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