I'm sure this question has been asked before, but I do not have the patience to search.....When I'm making a methylglin, do I add my spiceents to the primary ferment, or dry spice like I would with my ales????
Thanks
Now there's a question........
The only thing that I can recall is "less is more". If you look up the JAO recipe, Joe mentions about not using too many cloves, as they can over power the taste.
Well, as far as I can find out, that's all about the fact that cloves (and vanilla, chilli/capsaicin for that matter) contain chems, that "extract" in the presence of alcohol. So any that you put in might just have all the flavour/aroma elements extracted, hence the "don't use too much" warning.
As for when to put them in, well I'd guess it depends on what it is that's used, how much and what the yeast is.
Say, something like EC-1118, which does have a habit of blowing a lot of flavour/aroma elements straight out the airlock, especially if used in primary, might give you a lower level of spicing, but the problem can be that any reduction in the levels of aroma/flavour like that, can often become more prominent in taste as the batch ages i.e. doesn't taste much when "green", but is much more noticable after 12 months.
Hence, whatever you decide to do, keep the spices whole (possibly just split, like with a vanilla pod), and don't use too much. Worst case scenario would be that if you don't have enough of the spice flavour once it's aged, you can always add a tiny amount more in secondary, or tertiary, or even in the ageing container. Then the whole spice is easier to remove (I say "Whole", but don't forget, something like nutmeg might need breaking up into manageable pieces first, whereas berries, like allspice or juniper etc, would probably be fine "as is".....
Dunno if any of that helps etc.....
regards
fatbloke
