I use a tablespoon or so of black pepper in addition to coriander and orange peels in my wheats, but that obviously isn't what you are going for. I've never brewed a spiced beer per say, so I am interested to see what you decide on.

WLP001 is a bit expensive, better to get 5x Safale S-05 for the same price if you can wait on the shipping.

"Tyler" wrote: Another guy on another forum suggested I make a spice tea beforehand, which is what will go into the mash, to get a better sense of what's going in. Have you tried this before?



Why would you put the cocoa powder in secondary and not in the boiling mash?

I'm pretty sure that you mean wort instead of mash, so I'm gonna roll with that... :ugeek:



Teas are a good way of making sure you get the right proportion of spice, and I have used them, but I like my spice in the wort during the boil. The reason? Absolutely none. :D However, if you really want to fine tune the spice level, a better way would be to make a vodka extraction, use that to dose either a similar beer or a sample of your fermented wort to get the flavor profile that you want, and then add to the right proportions right before bottling (with maybe a tiiiiiny bit more to account for flavor mellowing over the conditioning period). This is what I do when I want to adjust the amounts that I already have, if they're a bit on the low side (and if I feel like it....I'm pretty lazy). And we're not talking about a lot of vodka...maybe a ounce or two just for the extraction, then a tbsp or two into the entire batch.



The Jamil Show did a whole show about Spice beers, and he talks about/explains the vodka thing better than I can as well as giving all sorts of info on flavor profiles and stuff: http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/member ... -23-06.mp3 ... there's also another on Winter Spiced beers, but I don't remember it that well, it might just be a rehash of the other: http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/member ... -24-07.mp3 . Zainasheff has some significant homebrewing cred, so it's worth a listen. ;)



For the cocoa-in-the-secondary thing....cocoa powder has a LOT of oil in it. If you add it to the boil, you're more than likely to kill any possibility of your beer producing a good head. When I say a LOT of oil, I don't mean essential oils that are tasty and have aroma, I mean visible-to-the-naked-eye oil-slick-on-top-of-your-wort amounts of oil. Adding to the secondary with hot water won't extract as much of this head-killer oil as the rolling boil will. Also, it seems to me that there's a bitterness that boiling seems to produce.

"gordsellar" wrote: ...yeah, I will never, ever add cocoa powder to secondary again. I did it with the more recent of my attempted chocolate beers, and the result was very, well... unfortunate is one word I can use. Some bottles had globs of the powder, others were spraying like mad... it was a bad, bad experience for all of us, and I still have bottles sitting that I'm reticent to open. Which is too bad, considering it tasted okay, actually.

:shock:

Did you mix it up before putting it in the secondary or did you just add powder?

reverendbeer wrote:

Did you mix it up before putting it in the secondary or did you just add powder?

I put it in hot water and stirred, IIRC, but I guess I didn't do it enough. Or maybe I used the wrong kind of cocoa; I'd just bought it, and whatever brand it was (it went into a cake or something, and good riddance) didn't really dissolve in hot water or milk even in small amounts -- for making hot chocolate, I kept ending up with a bunch of globs congealing at the top too.



Tyler wrote:

So this is a lot to take in at once. Most likely this brew will turn out 'decent' only to inspire me to make a better brew next time. But nevertheless I will try to work through my naivety as best I can before making it--tomorrow.

Well, one thing to remember is that this is a homebrewer's discussion board. Everyone is nice, and everyone is trying to be helpful, but we also all have our theories and ideas and experiences; and we were all exactly where you are now at some point, feeling naive and uninformed and a little lost. (For some of us, like me, it wasn't so very long ago at all!)



The beer will be whatever it will be. You could ignore our feedback and end up with something even better than what we're suggesting would lead to. Take what you like, drop what you like. It's cool, and I'm sure the beer will come out fine. Good, even. And if it doesn't meet your expectations, you'll refine it, and I'm sure by Christmas you'll have a mulled beer that you'll be proud to share with friends... (And fellow homebrewers, ha!)

I think what I'll do is make and ferment the wort with out spices (I'll add molasses and possibly caramelized wort while boiling).

Save the flavorful adjuncts until later in the boil, I'd say... you'll save more of the flavor and aroma if you add them later. Say, 20-30 min before the end of the boil is fine. Some might even advise a bit later. Oh, I've read people who use DME (like your spraymalt) also reserve it till later. If you do that, you need to calculate your hop utilization for the grain-derived sugars only, for first addition anyway, to make sure the bitterness ends up where you intend. That's easy to do with a program like Beer Calculus, though: just create the recipe as if you were using no adjuncts, figure out how many IBUs you will get out of your first addition, then create a second version of the recipe with all the adjuncts and so on included to measure your aroma addition. Or that's how I'd do it... dunno if there's a better way.

Then add the spices before bottling. Now if I've understood what's been said to me I should make a vodka(alcohol) extracted spice tea. Right now I'm thinking something like this:



Anise 1

Cinnamon .6

Vanilla extract .4

Black Pepper .65

Nutmeg .5

Fresh orange peels .some (could I orange juice?)

It is technically possible to use orange juice in a beer; I was shocked to discover this the other week when I saw a blood orange hefe recipe, which is something that seems to have become popular. (Some people are subbing in mandarin oranges, or clementines, or whatever one calls kyul in English, so that's something one could probably try in Korea, despite the fact blood oranges aren't widely available here... to my knowledge, anyway, because it if were I'd have made more sangria in the last year or two...)



Make sure you crush the anise and black pepper before soaking (use unground fresh peppercorns if you can, and grind or, better, crack them yourself). For the cinnamon, remember that gaeppi (the stuff available in sticks at street markets here) isn't technically cinnamon, but most of the world doesn't know that either. Cinnamon is obtainable, but unless you can get nice sticks of cinnamon to crack yourself, you're better off getting cassia from some ajumma and cracking it up by hand.



Since you're gonna put the vanilla in secondary, you might also make the vanilla extract yourself, if you want. You just need a vanilla bean and some vodka. (Though I will say that the vanilla extract I made this old-fangled way, with decent vodka no less, is boozier than I wanted. Probably wouldn't notice that if it's in a beer, though.)



Yeah, and get yourself a medicine dropper so you can experiment with how much to dose with, either with a sample pulled from the beer once it's in secondary, or with some other beer that feels roughly similar. Get a 20 ml sample of something, add X number of drops, and then see what you think of the taste. Bump up or down, then when you have what you want, calculate how many drops per 5 gallons of beer.



Like Jamil suggests on the MP3 linked above, don't add exactly how much you calculated -- put less, say, 65%-75%, and taste it to see what you think. (I find it's especially helpful to take the sample, put it in a small espresso or shot glass, and pop it into the fridge for a while. When it's cold, let it warm a little and taste it, for a better sense of how it will taste later on.

Going into my original mash bill will also be about .2kg molasses, and 1-2 cups of caramelized wort (is this enough?).

0.2 kg molasses sounds like not so very much. I think I put 0.65kg of blackstrap molasses (ie. darker and stronger) into my pirate stout, and the effect was relatively minimal even then, even with a relatively low OG. If you have more molasses on hand, and it won't bump your OG above what the yeast can tolerate, you might try adding a bit more, as long as you don't mind the beer being darker and slightly heavier. Or you could take out something else to make up the difference.



Oh, and while nobody's said anything about mash temperature, it might be something to consider. Simply put: within the normal mashing range, you can mash higher for more unfermentables, or mash lower for a drier, more fermentable wort.

I'm also considering blackberry, prune, grape, or cherry juice or fruit. Should these go into the boiling wort or secondary?

Actually, I don't know much about adding fruit in the boil or post-boil: I did it for the first time with a Saison a few weeks back, but it was figs and I suspect there were too few of them to make much difference at all in the final product.



On a purely gut-level. somehow grape juice sounds like a bad idea, but you know, people have done it. Including that Dogfish Head beer Chateau Jiahu, right? So... what the hell, maybe. Personally, though, I'd be thinking about cherry or blackberry. Or boysenberry, if I could get some.

One more thing... oats?

Well, I've read it's supposed to help with head retention, if you are doing the oats properly. (ie. Either using Quick Oats, which are already gelatinized, or doing a cereal mash. Oat flakes, I don't know about (Rob does, though, IIRC) but I imagine some kind of cereal mash wouldn't hurt.

Thanks for everyone's time and attention here, I have high hopes for this beer!

Let us know how it turns out! And good luck!

"Tyler" wrote: Ok,so, I've decided to add orange peel and vanilla extract at the end of my wort boiling. The vanilla because I figure it's already extracted so.... put it in. And the orange peel because it's hard to measure so I figure I'll put it in and roll forward. The other ingredients (anise, black pepper, nutmeg, and cloves added but cinnamon dropped) I'll make a tea.

In regards to the extract, like Gord said, err on the side of caution. Too little means you just have to add more, but too much means you're stuck with it.

I'm still trying to figure out if I should make an alcohol based tea extract or just a regular old water based tea. It matters because if I do alcohol I'll add it at bottling or during secondary. If it's water based I'll add it after boiling. I suppose when I add it will affect it's intensity and boldness (time in the secondary seems to mellow flavors).



But before I decide that I need to figure out how much spice to put in! For example, is 28 grams of anise enough for 20 liters? Or is 20 grams of cloves enough? I don't really have any reference point. I guess I could tea-brew it all up and add as desired but if anyone has experience here lend it to me now.

If you go with the alcohol extraction, it'll give you time to go to Lotte Mart and buy a couple of Guinness. Then you can pour them into a few cups (measuring the amount, of course), and dose those cups with a little of each until you find the flavor you like. :ugeek:



If you go the tea route, it'll be more of a toss-up as to how the flavors will taste, post-fermentation....but, of course, that's half the fun. :D

I went to homeplus today to look for fruit or fruit juice additives. I came out with a large bottle of POM pomegranate juice. I decided on pomegranate over the others because it's more tart. I have a feeling that adding juice might make the beer a bit too sweet for my palate (plus the girlfriend wanted pomegranate) and the tartness would help offset that.

Be careful with store-bought juice...pasteurized is fine...but if it has any sort of preservative in it, it'll slow or outright kill your fermentation. As for the juice making your beer too sweet, don't forget that the yeast is going to eat the s*&% out of the fructose in the juice, too.

About mash temperatures... I know that a higher temp produces more unfermentables resulting in a sweeter beer and mashing at a lower temperature makes a dryer maltier beer. What range is most often used for a dark beer? Does anyone have experience with this especially in relation to spiced beers? I'm afraid that if I mash at a high temp the malt sweetness will compete with the fruit juice. But at a lower temp the dry maltiness might not compliment the spices.

152F should be about middle-of-the-road, for sweetness...but, then again, I'm a notoriously lazy masher (but not in that quirky, 1920's, Thin Man way).



Always remember the Golden Rule: RDWHAHB.

Anyone who's monitored this thread is welcomed to try my beer when it's done, of course!

Now, that's what I'm talkin' 'bout.

Yeah, I will say... anise is bloody strong. Handle with caution.



I think making an alcohol extract of the spices is good, because you can control and test the flavor by dosing a stout with it. You might even consider using cheap vodka and making small, separate batches of extract so you can control how much of each ends up in the final mix.



Another thing you can do is, if you're bottling, split the batch in terms of how much of the spice-extract you add when bottling. You can make a strong, medium, and mild, and then you're unlikely to get a lot of the perfect level, but you're also unlikely to get a lot that is really intolerable. I did this with the pirate stout too... some bottles had the simple spice, some has spice and orange-cognac, and some had spice, orange cognac, and something else (can't recall what). All of this can be a good way to get a fix on what you want in the NEXT batch, so that you can have 5 gallons of exactly what you liked best in the batch.



(And if regarding the current, 5 gallon batch as a test batch is unappealing, I'd say you might want to consider trying a 1 gallon test batch for a new beer next time... this is a practice I'd love to get into, if I could just get organized and do it. I think I actually will start doing such a thing, and try to consider it a starter for the yeast I want to pitch into a beer a week later.)

Well, if you like making spiced beers (or baking?) then making several tinctures isn't a bad idea. Having extra isn't a problem as you can always use it later.