How to Sanitize Ground Spices?

[FirstAidBrewing]

I am making a winter beer from an older recipe that calls for cinnamon and nutmeg in the secondary. I plan on foregoing the secondary however I want to make sure that my spices are sanitary when I add to the fermenter.

What would be the best way to do this? I'm thinking either make a paste with vodka or do a brief boil of the spices.

What would be best? any other ideas?

-Cheers

 

[Chanoc]

Either should be good...
I'd go for vodka as boiling may drive off some aromatics....
But then, you don't need to boil, just reach pasteurizing temp for a few seconds....
Which will drive off aromatics to a much lesser degree...
HTH

 

[TexasWine]

Do you sanitize dry hops? If it were me, I'd just dump them in. Or if you're really concerned, add them at flame out.

 

[jekeane]

I find making a tincture by putting my spices in a mason jar then filling the jar with half a cup or so of vodka works quite well.

You then can pull a small sample of your beer say 300 mL or so and drop a milliliter at a time into the beer to decide an appropriate level of tincture to pour in.

I recently had a beer turn out a bit to malty for what I was hoping. The beer was for a wedding and I wasn't sure it would have mass appeal as it was. I added about 30ml to 3g of a pumpkin spice tincture and the result was a very good pumpkin beer.

I find two weeks of contact time with the spices gets good extraction but I have made tincture that has sat for a year and still been very good. The spices will settle to the bottom and you should give it a swirl every day or so for the first week when it's time to pour leave the spices in the jar and just pour your liquid.

 

[geo1976]

Vodka works well, depending on what i am adding it to i may use rum as well. For example my cider tea is a mason jar with clove, cinnamon, and all spice in gold rum. For a pumpkin i may add some fresh ground nutmeg and vanilla. I've never had a problem. i start it on brew day and treat it like a yeast starter, shake it every time i walk by.

 

[GHBWNY]

Do you sanitize dry hops? If it were me, I'd just dump them in.

Good point. Should be enough alcohol produced by end of ferm to ward off any potential bug in spices, etc..

 

[2005STi]

I believe you're over thinking it. There's no wild yeast in your sealed container of dried nutmeg.

 

[Steveruch]

Good point. Should be enough alcohol produced by end of ferm to ward off any potential bug in spices, etc..

That's what I was going to say.

 

[Jaybird]

Just toss em in! No need to do anything else.

OK maybe say a prayer to the BEER GODS. But other than that just go for it!

Cheers
Jay

 

[brewshki]

The reason we don't worry about dry hops is that hops are anti-bacterial. I would make a tincture and then just dose it in if I was planning on adding spices after fermentation. The one time I made a pumpkin spice beer however, I added the spices at the end of the boil.

 

[Brewsncrabs]

I nuke spices in a Corning glass for a few minutes and dump them in keg.