Holiday Spices for Ale

[eanmcnulty]

I would like to brew a holiday porter with allspice, nutmeg, and cinnamon stick. In what form do these need to be? Do I need to get these at the LHBS or can I use the stuff from the grocery store? Thanks.

 

[Freezeblade]

You can use the stuff from the Grocery store, get them in as raw a form as possible. cinnamon sticks, nutmeg in nut form, and whole allspice. Roughly break apart each, makes for easier removal or filtering. you don't want a bunch of powdered spice mess in your boil kettle.

 

[eanmcnulty]

Thanks, Freezeblade, again!
You have some interesting brews aging. I am just beginning to look towards those other than standard pales, porters, and stouts. On batch 28! I have a recipe for a dubbel I am going to brew as soon as I get my Barley Crusher.

 

[rockfish42]

I suggest going lightly on the spices, taste a sample after fermentation is finished and adjust by adding some vodka that you've soaked the same spices in.

 

[Goblet]

Yes -- what rockfish42 said. Easiest to soak the spices in vodka, in a small spice bottle, while the beer is fermenting. Adjust the flavor by adding very small amounts of the spice-infused vodka.

 

[Oldsock]

Supermarket spices are often mediocre and expensive, if you’ve got a spice store (like a Penzeys) I’d highly suggest checking it out. I’ve had the best luck adding spices after fermentation with holiday spiced beers. Adding spices to the boil tends to mute the character, which I like for subtle spicing on Belgians. I usually just add spices straight to the fermenter (aiming low) then make a spice tea with hot water to bring it up the rest of the way at bottling.

 

[bonsai4tim]

here in NC, spices are much much less money at an indian/pakistani food grocery store or at an asian food grocery store. The same spices are 3-10X as much at the grocery store.

t

 

[devilishprune]

If you have a whole foods or some other store that is similar and sells bulk items, you could try them. I did this last weekend for the spices for my beer and they all smelled very fresh/fragrant, probably because there is a lot of turnover on bulk spices (as opposed to the jar that will sit in your cabinet for years).

Also, doing it this way you can get just the amounts you need. When I bought my spices I spent a total of 82 cents, and I had plenty left over.

 

[eanmcnulty]

Wow, you guys have so many good ideas. I have Whole Foods and Indian/Pakistani stores near me. You can get anything in Chicago.
I think I will probably go pretty light on the spices. I didn't know about adding spice infused vodka. How long should you soak the spices in vodka. I'm excited about this now, I'm going to brew in abouit two or three weeks. I have two other recipes in the queue before the spiced porter.

 

[Goblet]

I put the spices into the vodka at the same time that I brew -- that way the infused vodka will be ready when I bottle. Just a teaspoon or so of spice for 1/2 to 1 small spice bottle of vodka. But the amount is going to depend on how strong your spices are. Let them soak at least a couple of weeks, preferably longer, and shake the bottle from time to time to mix things up.

Then add a drop at a time of the infused vodka to a glass of your beer, just before bottling. Once you find an amount you think tastes best, scale that up to your batch size, and add that to the beer. Most likely, it will still be a very small amount of infused vodka.

Since you're wanting a blend, you might either do the spices separately or smell check your vodka as it gets flavored to see if the balance needs adjusting. I have some mulling spices infusing that I'm doing that with.

 

[Goblet]

I was reminded yesterday that it helps to use the approximations 60 drops = 1 teaspoon, 3 tsp = 1 tbs, when scaling a tasting sample that was flavored with one or more drops.