Additions to secondary fermenter

[keithd24]

I've been exploring recipes and came across some that include adding things like vanilla beans or cocoa nibs to the secondary fermenter. Being new to home brewing; which I love by the way, one point couldn't be stressed enough, sanitation. Clean and sanitized equipment is paramount to good brewing. My question is, does introducing these additions to the secondary fermenter pose a risk of contamination and if it does, how is this mitigated? Can cocoa nibs and vanilla beans be sterilized? Thanks for the advice. Cheers!

 

[GilSwillBasementBrews]

I soak my vanilla beans in vodka to make an extract and use the liquid not the beans. I've heard others roasting cocoa nibs (presumably pasteurizing them) so yes they do pose slight risks to infect your batch but can be minimized.

 

[CU_tony]

I prefer a 24 hr alcohol soak for most of my secondary additions so far. Alcohol tends to leach flavors so I dump the whole lot in and figure it'll add a point or two to the FG

 

[hlmbrwng]

I recently finished up an imperial stout that I racked onto vanilla, cacao nibs, and bourbon soaked French oak.
I soaked the cacao nibs in bourbon for some time. EDIT: (I steamed them. See one of my posts below). I'll have to check my brewing notebook to see exactly what I did there. As for the vanilla beans, I don't remember do anything with them other than scraping the insides and then placing the innards in a small mesh bag. The beer is not infected.

I should say that the beer is at about 12.5% alcohol, which could be part of the reason there is no infection.

 

[hlmbrwng]

I know this isn't an answer to your exact question, but for a variant of the imperial stout, I racked onto cranberry and raisins. For this I heated the berries and raisins in a pan of water, to a temp just around boiling. Going higher could have caused the pectin to gelatinize.

There was very thin film (almost like when you notice oil in a puddle of rain water) at the tops of the bottled beer. This film has since disappeared. I have not tried this variant yet, but I'm very excited to do so. I imagine that the 6 months of conditioning help clear up the film.

 

[keithd24]

Thanks for the great advice! I will take this on board. Cheers!

 

[hlmbrwng]

I'm glad I write everything down in a notebook. I have a bad memory.

As for the vanilla: I may have just thrown everything in a fine bag, the scraped vanilla bean "caviar" and the beans themselves. But I was right in that there is no mentioned of cleaning them. I think that next time, what I might do is wash the beans first, since it's the insides that you want anyway. It probably wouldn't hurt to do that, if you are going to through everything in there.

As for the cacao nibs: I did not soak them in bourbon. Instead, I steam them, using one of those vegetable steamers that fit into a sauce pan. The holes were small enough that the nibs did not fall through. The nice thing about the cacao nibs is that they are hard and do not melt when steamed. So, instead of wasting time and bourbon soaking them, you could steam them.

I used 2 madagascar vanilla beans for 3 gallons of imperial stout. It might be slightly too much vanilla, but it's hard to say because I think the oak amplifies this flavor.