mint leaf advice (in secondary, or maybe primary)

I'm doing a chocolate mint stout, recipe says "4 ounces crushed fresh mint leaves in secondary".

Any advice on how to do this?

I guess my first instinct is to put the leaves in 150 degree water for 10 minutes to pasteurize them (is that right?), then dump the leaves and water into the secondary. Actually, I might put the leaves inside a hops bag to make them easy to get out later.

Does that sound right?

Also, I have never used a secondary before and am toying around with just doing it in the primary after fermentation has stopped. Is there any reason not to do that?

I'm not real familiar with mint leaves, but a tea might be a good way to go as long as no strange flavors come out due to the heat. Either that or you can just drop the leaves in. The alcohol and hops should take care of anything on the mint.

As for primary vs secondary, as long as you wait for most of fermentation to complete, no it doesn't make a difference

The only thing that I might be concerned about would be any oils from the leaves. Although I think that would be minimal.

lunchbox said:

The only thing that I might be concerned about would be any oils from the leaves. Although I think that would be minimal.

Click to expand...

You mean - concerned that the oils would react weirdly if I heated the leaves up first, or concerned that the oils would cause contamination, or...?

I assume concerned about oils and head retention. I doubt it would be enough to worry about. I'd soak the leaves in some Vodka or Everclear and then add the mix to the secondary. I'd be afraid if you boiled it you'd lose too much aroma.

Just adding them will work fine. If you heat them in any way, you lose much of the aroma. If you are really concerned about contamination, the vodka soak is the way to go.

This reminds me that I picked up a Chocolate Stout the other day and I should try some of my mint that has been soaking in vodka for about 2 weeks. I'll let you know how it goes. If you don't hear from me, PM me. I probably forgot to report back.

pjj2ba said:

I assume concerned about oils and head retention. I doubt it would be enough to worry about. I'd soak the leaves in some Vodka or Everclear and then add the mix to the secondary. I'd be afraid if you boiled it you'd lose too much aroma.

Click to expand...

+1, that's what I would do.

Question to those who say it will be fine just add the mint in directly without some sort of sanitization process: how do you know what is safe to do this with and what is not? If the alcohol and hops will kill bacteria, why do we even bother sanitizing bottles, racking equipment, etc?

Thanks.

What about using mint extract?

jigidyjim said:

Question to those who say it will be fine just add the mint in directly without some sort of sanitization process: how do you know what is safe to do this with and what is not? If the alcohol and hops will kill bacteria, why do we even bother sanitizing bottles, racking equipment, etc?

Thanks.

Click to expand...

Alcohol and hops in the beer don't kill bacteria, but they make it harder for stray bacteria to take hold. We sanitize the racking equipment and bottles just to ensure that we get rid of most of the bacteria (it's not sterilized, just sanitized so that most of the microbes are gone). You could probably get by sometimes without sanitizing as long as you used clean equipment. But since we spend so much time and money on making the beer, we try to be as sanitary as possible. It's easy, and cheap, to sanitize.

Mint leaves, when rinsed off, are unlikely to harbor bacteria that would ruin your beer, especially if you're putting into a solution of 6% ABV. The harsh enviroment would be unlikely to allow much to grow, although it is certainly possible.

If I was putting mint leaves in, I'd probably use a little sulfite on them since I'm a winemaker and have sulfites on hand. Without that, though, I'd probably be inclined to wash them well, and toss them in secondary.

jigidyjim said:

Question to those who say it will be fine just add the mint in directly without some sort of sanitization process: how do you know what is safe to do this with and what is not? If the alcohol and hops will kill bacteria, why do we even bother sanitizing bottles, racking equipment, etc?

Thanks.

Click to expand...

That's a good question.

I would say that if sanitizing would not affect the flavor or degrade the product in any way, then you should go for it.

With dryhopping, or adding spices for flavor and/or aroma, oftentimes there is no way to do this without affecting the final flavor in a negative way. Therefore you basically have no choice but to take the chance with the additions and hope the beer does it's thing, or use a method that might not give as good of results.

Reporting back!

I didn't drink it. I had a busy night with running my girls to and from dance and having to pick up a flute from the repair guy and by the time I got home and fixed a plate of food, I forgot about it and poured me a glass of Samuel Adams Octoberfest. While I was pouring I realized that I forgot about the mint beer, but it was already getting too late to drink too much so I'm putting it off until next time. Which should be tonight.