Experimenting with sugars/flavours/additives

Hi beer lovers,

I have started brewing my own beer for about 3 month now. I was really supprised that my first brew tasted really nice. Anyway back to the point of my thread. I'm thinking about experimenting with different sugars, fruits, spices in liquid sugar mixtures. Some of my starting ideas are listed below, but note that these are all in very small amounts.

Priming with the following:
1) Orange sugar mixtures
2) Star anise sugar mixtures
3) Ginger & star anises sugar mixtures
4) Orange and ginger sugar mixtures
5) orange and Star anise mixtures

I'd like to know if anyone else has played around with different flavours like this before, or just maybe I'm crazy and insane.

Edited:

Yes you can play all you want. Most who use these kinds of adjuncts are wheat beer brewers and the reason they do this is because wheat beers are lighter and use less hops and can benefit from these kinds of flavors. Look into belgian beers.

Thanks for the link. At the monemt I'm just brewing Coppers, Drought, larger, Euro Lager's. I'm thinking that I'll make somthing like a very strong sugar syuip and combine the additives to the mixture as it is reducing to a stage that I could use. I'm just not sure about the amount of syuip to add, but I'll just experiment with the weights and Millilitres I add.

I have some more questions to ask.

1) If I was to add the orange peel and star arise to the fermention process, how do I insure against contaminating the batch?
2) If I add the sugar mixture at the priming stage, would I be expected to wait a little bit longer before I tried the new recipe?
3) Would the addition of these extra componets to the beer affect OG, SG, and finally the FG readings at all?.

edit: I never would have throught about using corriander, sounds awesome.

Vertigo said:

I have some more questions to ask.

1) If I was to add the orange peel and star arise to the fermention process, how do I insure against contaminating the batch?

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Just boil your additions for 15 minutes and cool them and add to the beer.

2) If I add the sugar mixture at the priming stage, would I be expected to wait a little bit longer before I tried the new recipe?

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You can try any beer at any time during brewing/fermenting just to see what it tastes like.

3) Would the addition of these extra componets to the beer affect OG, SG, and finally the FG readings at all?.

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Not really because there is not too much sugar involved when compared to the volume of the batch.

edit: I never would have throught about using corriander, sounds awesome.

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I'm sure that there are many things that have been tried and found to be quite good or bad.

You might find these basicbrewing podcasts with Michael Tonsmeire the Mad Fermentationist.

December 28, 2006 - Belgian Sugar Experiment
James, Andy Sparks and Steve Wilkes collaborate to taste home brewer Michael Tonsmeire's experiment comparing six different sugars in Belgian Beers. Tough work, but someone has to do it.
http://media.libsyn.com/media/basicbrewing/bbr12-28-06.mp3


March 13, 2008 - Belgian Sugar Experiment II
The Mad Fermentationist Michael Tonsmeire Leads us through the second round of his tasty experiments using different sugars in Belgian beers.

http://media.libsyn.com/media/basicbrewing/bbr03-13-08belgian.mp3

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Also his blog is fun too. The Mad Fermentationist

thanks for that info.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Shonuff
If your carboy ends up pregnant then you have a problem.

Quote:
Originally Posted by BigKahuna
It's kinda like a family thing here....and you better not be a dick to the women around here or I'm gonna cut your nuts off and take gravity samples in your stretched out and tanned scrotum!

Click to expand...

That is so funny