Making spice "tea"

[PastorofMuppets]

So tomorrow I am bottling my first pumpkin ale.
I followed the recipe from this forum for punkin ale by reno_envy All grain.

The batch was in primary for 3 weeks and now in secondary with gelatin for 1 week. My last gravity check prior to racking to secondary was 1.010 which i was happy with although it was lower by 7 points from the recipe. I guess my yeasts were happy. I only racked it to add gelatin and help it clear.

I am thinking it needs a little more oomph in the spice dept, especially to help with the lower FG I am looking at from the recipe. I am looking for more of the pumpkin pie in a bottle type of flavor.

So how should i make a spice addition for this to bottle.


Can I add spices to the priming sugar? Should I boil like a cup of water with more spices and add that and priming sugar to the bottle bucket?

Need advice on technique and amounts of spices to add. I have whole cloves, cinnamon sticks. I also have powdered pumpkin pie spice.


Help a pastor out please.

 

[jdauria]

I would suggest adding a spice tea to the secondary, then using a sanitized spoon, swirl the beer around to mix well without disturbing any sediment at the bottom. Then taste it to decide if it is good enough for what you are looking for. Start off with just 1/2 a teaspoon of spices each and keep doing to it tastes the way you like. Then let it sit in the carboy a few more days before bottling.

If you add the spices to bottling bucket instead, you have no guarantee they mix well and you will not really be able to change the levels of spice at that stage. Plus I don't think you would want whole cloves or cinn sticks in the way at bottling.

Personally, at this stage I would use the pumpkin pie spice. And yes, you could boil a cup of water to make the tea...or what about a cup of vanilla vodka? Will not need to boil and will add a hint of vanilla to the beer too!

 

[inkman15]

This was my second year brewing a pumpkin beer (which I just kegged on Weds) and I have always put a spice tea at the bottom of my keg before racking the beer on top of it. It's like you'd do with priming sugar for bottling. I've found that the flavors get pretty well integrated this way.

My method is to create a spice combination that totals about 1 tsp total and boil it in 1 cup of water, let it chill to room temp or colder and then rack on it. For this batch, I did:

- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp ginger
- 1/8 tsp allspice
- 1/8 tsp nutmeg

I don't strain the mixture before kegging. Yes, it adds some sediment but I think the flavors benefit.