Making brew for Xmas

[shaneyplane]

I wondering if, With Christmas coming up im thinking of adding some sort of flavor maybe cinnamon or some type to the brew, My question is if i get normal food flavor or spice like Schwartz would they be any good and how much to put in, also would i put it in the fermentation barrel or the bottles?
Thanks

 

[shaneyplane]

anyone got any ideas or tips for my question?? :wha:

 

[tubby_shaw]

Take some of the wort and boil your selected spices in another vessel, allow it to cool and add it to the bulk of the wort before you pitch the yeast :thumb:

 

[shaneyplane]

Thats great thanks, will just normal food spice work ok and how much should i put in?

 

[leondz]

Depends on personal taste. Certainly not a lot though. If e.g. you were cooking an 8" cake, you'd be able to taste 1 tsp of cinnamon, and that's got to be about 1.5-2L of volume, so really you don't need much of a spice to get taste from it.

I did this brew a little while back, which is fairly heavy, and the flavours leave just enough of a hint poking through the main body of the beer - don't think I'd like to be taste very much more flavour out of them. It really depends on the beer style, the spice, and your personal taste. Maybe half an ounce of cinnamon and a quarter ounce of star anise in ~20L of Flanders Red, at most?

You might also fare better with cinnamon bark than the dessicated orange dust powder stuff, the latter has inferior flavour and is definitely more likely to end up floating about in the final pint :sick:

 

[shaneyplane]

Thats great thanks