Couple ?'s re: Gingerbread Ale (Southern English Brown)

Today I'm brewing NB's Nut Brown AG kit. We plan on adding spices at the end of the boil to make it Gingerbread Cookie Ale from Randy Mosher:

4g Cinnamon
1g Allspice
1g Cloves

The recipe calls for 2g ground ginger. I despise buying ground spices, so I always grind from whole when I can. I am wondering how much fresh ginger I should use in place of the 2g ground ginger that the recipe calls for.

Also

What does everyone think about fining this? I am leaning towards fining it, as I think it should have clarity. Cloudy brown ales aren't the best in my opinion, although this is going to be Christmas presents so a rustic feel wouldn't be too bad. I have whirlfloc and gelatin available for fining, which should I use if you think clarity would be good in this beer.

If you have a local Penzeys (or other spice shop) you can get whole dried ginger root that you can grate with a microplane. Otherwise I'd say use about a one-inch cube of fresh and chop it finely. But I like ginger.

I went with a two tablespoon fresh ginger to 1 teaspoon dried ginger ratio, which is the highest ratio I read about for conversion rates. I pureed it with enough water to get the job done. The wort smelled exactly like gingerbread. Hopefully it translates through fermentation.

I tgink a small amount of molasses would be good

This sounds amazing! I fully intend to copy this. Let us know how it goes

Well the smell of the wort was that of fresh baked gingerbread. The CO2 exhaust from fermentation also smelled nice and sweet. I am thinking about racking to secondary in the next few days. My only issue is that there are several whirlfloc protein rafts still floating at the surface. Should I wait for them to drop out? Or is that normal for whirfloc? I've never used it before.

So after cold crashing for a few days, the rafts dropped out and I racked to a keg and plugged it in. Tonight, I had my first glass and it was a little overcarbed, but otherwise a very tasty beer. Most of the gingerbread quality is in the aroma, which I hope doesn't dissipate too quickly. Once again I am amazed at how quickly beer changes at this stage. Two days ago, I was tasting this thing and wondering why it tasted sour and not so good; today, it is a tasty beer.

Really interested in doing this or something like it as well! I have one question though. Whats in a NB kit? when I bought my kit it came with a pre-made fiesta wort just ad yeast and your done super easy and SUPER BORING! I like to steep my own grains, add malts ect. Would this kit allow me to do all this or should I look up other nut brown recipes?

Timmyg316 said:

Really interested in doing this or something like it as well! I have one question though. Whats in a NB kit? when I bought my kit it came with a pre-made fiesta wort just ad yeast and your done super easy and SUPER BORING! I like to steep my own grains, add malts ect. Would this kit allow me to do all this or should I look up other nut brown recipes?

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I brewed the all-grain NB kit, so it's basically starting from scratch with premeasured grain and hops. All grain requires specialized equipment. Extract kits vary in the complexity of method. Partial mash kits are probably what you would want as they contain a small amount of specialty grains that you "mash" and add to the wort.

NB refers to Northern Brewer, one of many online brewing sites that are excellent. They have all different kinds of kits.

I'm going to do something like this today, albeit too late to have done by Christmas. How did yours turn out? Is there anything you would change? I was going to add a touch of molasses.

Timmyg316 said:

I'm going to do something like this today, albeit too late to have done by Christmas. How did yours turn out? Is there anything you would change? I was going to add a touch of molasses.

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Sorry, I've been away for a while. It turned out good. The spicing was just about perfect, but my one gripe was that it was just a bit "watery" tasting, but I attribute this to over carbing it. I think when I brew something like this again, I will go with the bare minimum carbonation, so that the subtle spice and malt flavors will come through better. As an experiment, I might drink one of my remaining bottles at room temperature, as low temperatures can interfere with the tongue's perception of subtle flavors as well.

If you brewed it, what did you do differently, and how was it?