Cooper's Stout + Christmas Spices?

Hello all! In the Spring I asked about adding raspberries to a Cooper's Pilsner kit and followed your advice, resulting in an AWESOME raspberry beer for the Summer. Well, now it's time to start thinking about Christmas beer...

I have one more kit that I would like to use before I try going to all-grain. This is a Cooper's Irish stout. I would like to add cloves, cinnamon, and vanilla to it (spices from a family Christmas baking recipe). I have noticed from searching the forum that spices are usually added during the last few minutes of boiling.

Because a kit does not require boiling, when shall I add the spices? Also, any suggestions for amount of spices per 5gal. batch? I found a pumpkin ale recipe that suggested, for instance, 0.011lbs cinnamon and 0.003lbs nutmeg, but again this was for addition during boiling, so I don't know how much my mileage may vary ;-)

Thanks again...this is all so much fun!!!

I had great success with a winter ale by steeping my spice mixture in vodka and then adding it (to taste) before bottling. I actually used an old (cleaned and sanitized) yeast vile as a steeping vessel, worked pretty well.

So, if I used the Vodka method, would I add that to the whole batch or is it something that has to be on a bottle-by-bottle basis? If possible, I think I would something that can be for the whole batch so it is uniform...

Thanks

Hey guys (and gals). Don't mean to be rude by bumping my own post, but I was hoping maybe someone might have some more thoughts on this one. I'm pretty excited about starting this batch ;-)

Okay, so if you make a spice mix then you add it to the entire batch.

To do this, most people will get a predetermined amount of beer (like 8oz) and add small amounts of their spiced-vodka to the beer in measured amounts. Say you add 1 tablespoon/8 oz, then you can step that up to 5 gallons or whatever your volume is to determine how much you need to put in your entire batch.

As far as amounts go, I would look around at other people posts, I'm sure there are a million. My recommendation would be to go easy on the cloves, because those things are WAY too easy to go overboard on (although my experience is from cooking with them, I'm sure others could agree that this also applies to brewing).

Okay, so that gives me a bit to go on! Also, I did find one other thread that seems relevant:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f37/when-add-spices-hops-fruit-coopers-extract-kit-141579/

So, with the kit you use hot water for mixing with the ingredients from the can. I could boil the spices in hot water and then allow that to cool a bit below boiling, before adding it to the kit. If I do it this way, then I should basically be able to get an idea of spice amounts from other non-kit recipes

Ans yes, I agree on not going overboard on ANY of the spices because I am looking for this to be SUBTLE, not overbearing ;-)