How much spice?

[JLamb]

So I just bottled an American wheat that had been in a primary for 1 month and 5 days. So during the boil I steeped 1.5oz of lemon peel 1oz of fresh cut ginger and .5 oz of juniper berry. My first taste of the brew before bottling I didn't think these flavor we very district or existing at all. Did I not use enough? I steeped the spices for about 25 mins in the boil? Was it to long? Or to short? Will bottle conditioning and carbonating change the profile of the beer and possible bring out more flavors?


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[wtfDean]

i just did a spicy beer and here's how i did it:

~1.7 oz fresh ginger peeled and grated
4 cinnamon sticks broken into bits
6 allspice berries lightly crushed
1 nutmeg seed grated

i put those in a tight mesh bag and put it into the boil 30 seconds before flame out. killed the gas, let it sit 10 minutes. pulled the bag out and let it drain as well as possible, tried to squeeze all the juice out before discarding the spices. after a week the ginger was really the only flavor i could detect in the beer

i have been told that 1-2 oz ginger is the recommended amount for a 5 gallon batch, 2 oz being particularly noticeable. 1 oz should still be noticeable, but if you only cut your ginger into pieces then maybe you didn't get a very good flavor extraction. i grated mine on a microplane and it basically turned into ginger paste. that was perfect.

25 minutes at a full boil could have done it too. i've never boiled spices, only steeped at knockout. you could let the spices steep in the boil for the last one or two minutes, but i don't usually let anything that will be flavoring my beer boil for very long. i'm not saying you can't boil your flavorings and get a good product, i'm just saying this is how i do it.

 

[JLamb]

That gave me a lot of insight. I do think I could have had weak flavor extraction , but my observation of this was that the boil did start taking on another color from the spice bag. This was my first batch ever so your recommendation helps fuel my inspiration to keep trying.


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[wtfDean]

yes definitely keep at it. spices are weird sometimes. with that beer i just described every other spice flavor but the ginger wasn't detectable, so i had to make a spice extract with vodka and nutmeg, allspice and cinnamon. added that to secondary and everything is grooving better than it was. you can play around with adding spices at different stages to see what kind of flavors you get

 

[JLamb]

Also the recipe that I followed said to steep before the boil and from what I gathered many spice after the boil. Does this mean many are steeping after hop additions right before a primary? This was an extract recipe would that change the timing on spicing?


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[JLamb]

Just for clarification your saying that the optimal time to add spices for flavor would be roughly about the same time as when you add flavor hops?


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[wtfDean]

add spices at or around knockout. so if you add your flavor hops at 0 minutes in the boil, then yes.

 

[JLamb]

O I see so. Between flame out and tossing the wort in the primary. Got it


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[wtfDean]

well, between flame out and chilling. you don't want to put anything in the beer after chilling it. but you already knew that

 

[JLamb]

There must be confusion on my part. So when you say knock out are ou implying 0 mins is at the beginning or 0 mins remaining in the boil at the end. I'm really sorry for not grasping this.


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[JLamb]

Ah never mind I see what you are saying now.


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[wtfDean]

so when talking about when to add stuff to the boil, the "minutes" refer to "how many minutes are left until the boil is done." so when i say 0 minutes, i mean the boil is now over. you have boiled for 60 minutes and now there are 0 minutes in the boil. that is what i mean by knock out and flame out. you turn the flame off and then add the stuff