To boil the spices or to add them into the demijohn?

What do people do with their methyglins? I made a Christmas one where I boiled all the spices and then tried to sieve them out before pouring the liquid into the demijohn. One of the elements of the receipt was 50g of cloves, but I noticed that some receipts online suggest just adding cloves into the demijohn and they only recommend 1 or 2 per 5 litres. Is it much more taste efficient to add them like that rather than trying to make a brew out of them? Dear elders in brewing please impart your wisdom.

 

I'm of the opinion of adding to the secondary in a bag where you have greater control of the final intensity. With cloves and cinnamon, less is usually more.

 

Cloves are incredibly strong and it takes only a few to over-dominate all the other flavors. But I guess if you are looking for an intense clove flavored mead or wine you add more than a handful, but 50 g seems like an enormous amount.

 

Don’t cloves numb your mouth?!

 

+ 1 What A-Man said. Check it every day and when it hits the flavor profile you like just pull them out.

The alternative and arguably better control for flavor is to boil them or create a tincture by infusing them in water or vodka and add the tincture to taste. Just add a little at a time until your satisfied with it. Doing it this way I have found in-fact you do have more control but as I tend to get desensitized to the taste pretty quickly i must wait a number of hours between additions and just don't want to mess with it that often.

 

Thanks all!