Pumpkin Pie Spices Sinking to Bottom

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brewgasm135

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Hey guys, I'm finally drinking a pumpkin wheat ale I brewed and i noticed the last few bottles I had bottled (I know this cuz they were in different bottles) had a lot more pumkin spices than the rest of my batch.

I also noticed that when creating my priming sugar (I added an extra amount of pumpkin spices to the priming solution) for my other pumpkin ale that I bottled last night, the spices weren't disolving and would sink to the bottom of my pot. This would seem to be my issue.

When creating priming solution, I'm boiling table sugar and pumpkin pie spices in water for 10 minutes and stiring quite a bit.

Any advice or similar problems you all have/had?
 
I let the spices sink in the primary and then rack off of it to keg. They will not dissolve in solution. You can get plenty of spice flavor without them dissolving.
 
This recipe, I did about 1 tbls at the last 5 min of the boil, .5 tbls in secondary, and when I racked into bottling bucket I found the spices still lacking so I added another tbls in my priming solution. Sounds like a lot, but the spices are extremely subtle in all but the last few bottles. It's still good beer, but I was hoping for a little more spice.
 
One thing I forgot to say, the first pumpkin I made I put 1TBS of cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove. The clove turned out to be way to strong. The second batch I cut the nutmeg and clove down to 1 tsp and it was just the right amount of spices.
 
I wonder if your spices are old?
They should be less than 6 months old [they say].

Anyways, good luck.
even though i quoted the spice tea (above), my technique is to rehydrated the spices in wort for 10 min in a small cup; then add at flame out. i no chill, so they steep overnight.
 
I think even if they settle, they should still contribute flavors, oils, etc. To take care of both dissolving and sanitizing the addition (I'm going to add it at bottling) I made a tincture of sorts by using some vodka (with a bit of vanilla-infused vodka and whipped cream flavored vodka mixed in) and adding the pumpkin pie spices to that. The powder and everything all sank to the bottom, but the rest of the liquid certainly took on a nice orange color and pumpkin pie flavor. I'll decant this infused vodka and add it at bottling.

That works when it has time to infuse, though. It sounds like your problem is that the spice is quickly sinking and ends up at the bottom of the bottling bucket and doesn't spend that much time in contact with the beer. There's probably not much to be done about that, which is why people usually either seem to add the spices at the end of the boil, or the beginning of a secondary, or make a tincture/extract to add at bottling.
 
Howdy neighbor! As has been said already, spices won't dissolve, so the goal is to get the flavor imparted into the wort. Sometimes, testing is necessary. In your next batch of this beer, kick up your spice volumes.
 
The spices were all new from the store, but I honestly did.t look at the date. I found another issue that tied everything together.

A couple of my bottles ended up being flat. It seems my priming solution didn't mix properly. I didn't bother to make sure the priming solution had cooled down to 70 f before I poured it into my bottling bucket. I cooled it a bit, but figured racking my beer on top of it would have cooled the solution. Could a difference in density due to the temperature differences effect mixing efficiency? Again, I racked on top of the priming solution in a swirling flow.
 
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