Can I spice-up the amber ale after primary?

[davidcr80]

I have a Brewers Best extract American Amber a few days in and I wish I would have modified it a little bit just to get creative...is that an option? Can I add, flavor, aromas, hoppiness, alcohol levels at some point? How/when do I do so?

 

[h22lude]

I have a Brewers Best extract American Amber a few days in and I wish I would have modified it a little bit just to get creative...is that an option? Can I add, flavor, aromas, hoppiness, alcohol levels at some point? How/when do I do so?

You can add a bunch of additions to change it. You can dry hop for more aroma, you can add spices now or at bottling, you can add fruit if you want, etc.

 

[lowtones84]

I've read some folks on here who do this kind of thing at bottling by either boiling a spice with their priming sugar or making an extract of something with vodka. I believe Revvy had a post about boiling ginger with his priming sugar. Don't have them on hand, but use the search function of the forum. Also, it seems like by doing it at bottling you could split the batch in half and leave half of it as it is while spicing the rest.

 

[djfriesen]

You can easily do all those things, except adding alcohol. By racking onto different substances (vanilla, coffee, fruit, spices, etc.) in secondary, or putting hops in secondary, you can easily add flavors, aromas, and hoppiness. I don't know of a good way to up alcohol at this stage. Anything you tried would be sure to affect the balance and "feel" of the beer, so I would advise against it. No problem re-brewing it, with some tweaks, in order to bump up the ABV, though.

 

[cincydave]

Also, it seems like by doing it at bottling you could split the batch in half and leave half of it as it is while spicing the rest.

I did this with a porter. Bottled half plain and added pumkin spice to half. Easy way to do a pumkin flavored beer.