Principles for adding ingredients at rack?

[hlm123]

I'm not clear on how I need to prepare the spices/hops/other that I want to rack my beer onto in secondary. Hop pellets I understand can be dropped right in, but what about when you throw in a bag of whole flowers? For spices, do you want to boil them in a cup of water first, or can you just pour them in dry? I've also read on HBT about soaking in vodka (in the case of vanilla beans specifically) to bring out flavors. The idea of adding vodka to beer doesn't sit well with me, but that's just me. Tomorrow I'm going to be racking my Christmas ale to secondary and adding cocoa powder, sweet orange peel, and a cinnamon stick. My thought was to boil them together, then as the water cools down add gelatin, dump that into the carboy along with some hop pellets and rack onto that. I'm just wondering if that makes sense, or what other ways there are to do it. On a related note, when are Campden tablets used in beer? From what I understand, it affects the water chemistry and acts as a sterilant. So my thought was, why couldn't just throw in a Campden when you're putting the beer in contact with something and want to avoid infection? Thanks.

 

[WoodlandBrew]

I've had good luck making various teas by adding grains or whole spices to water and bringing the temperature up to at least 170°F. Then I use a 20ml sample and try adding varring amounts of the different teas until I find something I like. Then I scale it up for the whole batch.

Campden tables have two uses in brewing. In low quantities they are effective at removing both free chlorine and other chlorine compounds from water. At higher doses (typically what is listed on the package) they will inhibit most microbiology growth. This does include yeast, so if you add too much when your rack it will leave you with flat beer. My book has details.

 

[hlm123]

If too much Campden is added is there any way to recover or is it inhibited permanently? Thanks for that.