Spice Ratio

I have a Bochet recipe that for one gallon calls for;

15 corns of long pepper
25 Grains of Paradise
6 cloves
1/4 inch of fresh ginger

I want to make a 5 gallon batch, but multiplying everything by 5 seems extreme for these spices. Is there a formula when increasing recipe amounts?

Youch, even for a 1 gal batch that's a ton of spices. For going to a 1 gal batch to a 5 gal on a recipie you don't need to scale it. It's prob better if you don't. Potent spices such as the clove I wouldn't upscale at all. Some of the other less potent spices I would go only to double what you have for a 5 gal. LESS is more with spices. And putting your spice in the secondary is better than the primary. Some like to do a little in the primary and the rest in the secondary.

I know one person that makes extracts(tinctures) of all his spices prior to adding to his secondary. That way he can control it better.

Really the spices are up to you. But keep in mind, you cannot take out spices but can always add more. I did 1/2 a nutmeg freshly crushed in a 5 gal of pear nutmeg mead and it overpowered the pear in about 1 1/2 years. As it aged the spice got more potent. So be cautious.

Matrix

DontPanicMan said:

I have a Bochet recipe that for one gallon calls for;

15 corns of long pepper
25 Grains of Paradise
6 cloves
1/4 inch of fresh ginger

I want to make a 5 gallon batch, but multiplying everything by 5 seems extreme for these spices. Is there a formula when increasing recipe amounts?

Click to expand...

What are corns of long pepper and grains of Paradise?

I did a bochet with those exact spices (pictures just posted in the Show me your mead thread).
I did a three gallon batch and used 12 grams of long pepper, grains of paradise and ginger respectively. I only used 2 grams of cloves since they are rather overpowering.
I let the spices stay in primary for four days and then got them out. The result is a definite spicy taste which works great with the caramelized sugar from the honey.

Well, I don't know the taste of some of those spices, as they're hard to find here.

What I do know is that cloves are strong as hell. I used three in an early JAO and it rendered it virtually undrinkable.

Ginger, I find, is often the opposite. A ginger wine I made called for 10oz, I used 4lb 10oz and it still wasn't mega hot and fiery.

I suspect the best bit of advice, is from Matrix i.e. the tincture route sounds the smartest way to go. A fixed amount of alcohol to the spice proportion should do the trick.

Then you can add too taste (tinctures kept in proportion and added to secondary)