New Newbie

[deanpearson62]

Hi Dean Pearson here I'm in Murrieta Ca. and new to the forum but brewing for a couple of years now.
Not into the all grain thing yet. I use extract kits mostly from Beer Beer and more Beer.
The question I have at the moment is in regards to flavoring beer. I have a brown porter I plan to use rum barrel wood chips on. Looking to also add vanilla, cocoa and almond with a slight amount of a non fermentable sweetener such as xylitol.
I understand that I will have to mess with the amounts of each for personal preference but am hoping you guys can give rough amounts of each for a five gallon soda keg,....?
One idea I have is to add these to a fermenting sugar and allow it to age and carbonate in the soda keg.

Yes ? No ?
Positive suggestions welcome.

Dean.

 

[JasontheBeaver]

Depending on how new newbie you are this sounds like biting off an awful lot.
To add rum, oak, vanilla, cocoa, almond, and sweetener to a beer is ambitious to say the least. Of course you can do it but are you willing to risk your entire 5 gallon batch?
Let's put it this way, when trying someone's beer I have yet to find one that had THAT many additions that was even worth taking a second sip. If you're truly a newbie than my humble free advice is to perfect your base beer style (brown porter) then perfect the addition of one ingredient, then another, then another, etc. Otherwise you could likely end up wasting so much good beer searching for the right mix. Whereas if you add one ingredient at a time it allows you the flexibility to tweak it as you go, as in, add your vanilla to the low end of what you think you want then check, add more as needed and so on. Adding them all at once will result in a mish-mash of flavors that will be hard to detect which one needs tweaking.
Good luck!