Soaking dry spices in flavor extracts

[JDFury]

Howdy all, long time reader, first time poster.

I've done a search and seen a lot of different info and techniques for adding spices to a brew, but I had a specific idea in mind that I couldn't see confirmed or rejected as an evil beer-killing technique.

I want to attempt a chai porter (with the base coming from a brewer's best kit--this is just my second batch). I have two significant limitations: (1) I don't own a secondary fermenter (and I'm not too keen on using one, anyway) and (2) I really don't want to boil the cinnamon.

My plan is to soak the ground dry spices and minced fresh ginger (probably 1-to-2 tsp worth) in about 1 TBSP of pure vanilla extract (35% alcohol) overnight. My plan is to then add about half of the mixture at flameout and reserve the rest to add to the bottling bucket.

Anyone see any problems with this? Will the extract sanitize the dry spices? Will that solution still be viable in 3-to-4 weeks when I go to bottling, or should I just make the solution two times before each "event"?

Thanks for considering...

On a side note: I had planned on using all of the hops provided with the kit (bittering, flavor, and aroma) on schedule, but I intended to cut the amount of flavor and aroma hops in half. Is this dumb? Should I leave them in as instructed? Should I remove them altogether?

Thanks again.

 

[dcHokie]

You are basically describing making a tincture, although you'll probably want to soak your spices longer than overnight though.

You'll be fine without a secondary fermenter, and you can add your spices/extract tincture directly to your primary rather than the bottling bucket.

If you are brewing a standard porter kit, I'd keep all the hops on schedule as per the recipe so that you'll have a balanced base beer as a vehicle for your enhancements.