using spices

[percival]

with wintery nights and mulled wine approaching i am wondering if any of you have any experience of using spices in brews. i'm a fan of spices and have almost all of them in common use. nutmeg, cinnamon, cassia bark, green and brown cardamons, mace, cloves, star anise and fennel seem to me to be likely good contenders for adding a little something to wines.

the question is ... when to add them (at fermentation, conditioning or serving), how much to use, and whether to use whole or freshly ground. :wha:

 

[BrewStew]

The mulled wine i've bought in the past had a bag of spices that you steep in the wine while it's being warmed. as for what's in it, i've no idea

[PS on a side note, any chance of a sake recipe? no ones responded to my post in the brewing discussion section and thought you'd be the man to answer.. one further contemplation i probably should have put the question in "other brews" ]

 

[percival]

here we go .... this is pretty much what berry suggests:

for 3 gallons:
1.5 kg raisins
2.25 kg long grain rice (i use basmati)
4.5 kg sugar
2 Table-Spoon citric acid (i used one and some lemon juice)
yeast (i used to use CWE multipurpose, this time i used a white wine yeast, nothing special but can't remember what it was)
nutrient (i used marmite first time round and it worked a treat, this time used a bought in nutrient)
water 3 gallons.

stick all the dry stuff in your fermenting bin, apart from the stuff added in small quantities)
boil the water and pour it over everything and make sure the sugar dissolves. when its cool enough add the yeast, nutrient and citric acid.
pop the lid on and stir it every day for 3 weeks. then rack.

some recipes also suggest washing the rice. some suggest mashing or chopping the raisins. but this recipe doesnt and seems to work just fine. Berry says this'll make a medium wine. he also says that once fermentation stops you can filter and drink it. i have never used a filter, never had a reason to, this brew clears nicely without needing any help. i always leave my wines much longer than most recipes suggest. But if you drink this sake warm (which is how i was introduced to sake) then drinking it this early will probably be ok. Really fine sakes are drunk cold, but as i said in another thread this isn't true sake, and so isn't really fine ;-) and so enjoy it warm as an alternative to mulled wine or a toddy. its a fiery little blighter :drunk:

 

[BrewStew]

Thanks!

that beauty looks worthy of the recipe section :thumb:

i'll be buying all the bits when i do my food shop this week .. i think i'll boot the Cabernet Sauvignon kit i keep meaning to do back again for this Sake

 

[percival]

cool, glad to hear you are enthused!

its a great brew imho. i like brewing something specifically for a hot drink, rather than mulling a failed attempt. not that i wouldn't be against mulling a poor brew, far better than making gallons of vinegar from it!

this brew has turned out to smell just fine all through the process. the first time i tried it the fermenting brew stank like something died in it, but turned out to be yummy. keep me posted with how you go, especially if you try something a bit differnet, rice variety for example, or if you have a great hunch about the right yeast for the job.

 

[A T]

Great thread guys I'd nearly be tempted myself :hmm:

 

[BrewStew]

keep me posted with how you go, especially if you try something a bit differnet, rice variety for example, or if you have a great hunch about the right yeast for the job.

will do :thumb:

 

[percival]

hows the sake going stew? i'm guessing that its almost time to rack it?

back on the subject of the thread (we did get side-tracked, but pleasantly so) i am experimenting with spices in my rosehip wine. One gallon has a mace flower, another a star anise flower and the third a bit of a cinnamon quill. i added these when the initial vigorous fermentation had slowed and the wine had been racked. Its still gently bubbling away now. I may have forgotten all about this in 6 months time (ish) when i come to drink it, so if you want to know how its turned out then gimme a memory jogger here. ... and if any of you also try brewing with spices lets share our results

 

[J_P]

There's an article on Fermentarium about spiced beers and how to brew them

http://www.fermentarium.com/content/view/269/58/

Personally I think they are the work of Satan :lol:

 

[percival]

lol, i had a bottle of very fine beer brewed with ginger (seemed to me to be the fresh root NOT the powder), think it's name was something like blackfly. it was absolutely delicious, especially with curry. Personally i don't think of ginger as being a spice, like garlic. but hey that's just me. I've always been a bitter, and real ale, drinker but one fine day i was introduced to guinness (in large quantities) and saw the wonders of the black stuff too. I can see why an aversion to tinkering with beer by adding spices would upset some, but then again i bet the first to add hops were cussed too!

i'm not into brewing beer anymore, tried it and it didn't suit me. maybe i just had bad luck with faulty barrels and got bored with bottling tens of pints at a time. wine suits me these days, but good onya all those who like brewing beer cos whenever i'm in a pub it will always be beer or whisky for me, not wine, so i understand that. and besides ... aren't ac/dc the product of satan :party:

my goodness i just noticed the spell checker is flagging whisky but not whiskey !!!!! the world has gone crazy

edit: that beer was called blandford fly.

 

[BrewStew]

hows the sake going stew? i'm guessing that its almost time to rack it?

I havent started it yet, heck i've not yet got the ingredients for it either! been so busy lately i've not been able to get a full food shop done (whch will include the sake ingredients)

 

[BrewStew]

tesco.com to the rescue ingredients are ordered and i'll probably knock it up tomorrow, along with the 24L of apple juice that i ordered too :thumb:

 

[BrewStew]

dammit. i've only got champagne yeast in stock... no standard wine yeast.

i guess i'll just have to pay special attention to degassing it before i put it in bottles so it doesn't come out fizzy :shock:

 

[percival]

i had a sake come out with a sparkle twice. it was really nice, but of course it would lose the sparkle if it was heated up.

 

[BrewStew]

cool. i've just put it in the brewday section as i'm all set for tomorrow. and i wanna stop hijacking this thread so there's a question for you there :lol:

 

[percival]

okies, preliminary results on spices in rosehip wine are in, cos i just racked it.

1/ is about 2 weeks since the spices were added
2/ Mace, a slightly more than subtle flavour of mace, very yummy, and i would definately repeat it.
3/ Cinnamon, can't taste this at all, but with a mouthful rather than a sip i might do. opinion is on hold.
4/ Star anise, wonderful! really added something without being overpowering. Good for wintery nights i reckon, or just something unusual to show off

other observations;

the mace was very mobile in the wine, sinking, collecting bubbles, rising. i didn't see it happening but sometimes the mace flower was on the top and sometimes not. Star Anise mostly stayed on top tho at the start of racking i couldnt see it so it must have sunk. by the time i was half way through it was on top again. The cinnamon sank after a couple or 3 days and stayed at the bottom. The mobility of the spices probably had something to do with how much flavour has been transferred. Maybe smaller pieces of cinnamon would have worked better, or grinding it. Mace and star anise, i wouldn't change the method, doesn't need it.

there's a haze in all 3 demijohns. none any better than another. Only time will tell if it will clear or be one of those pectin hazes that will only go so far unless i intervene in some way. Experience tells me they will probably appear clear in the bottle even if there is a haze when viewed in a demijohn. but hey i may get lucky and get beautiful clear wine.

i can't tell whether the woody nature of the spices has added any dryness (didn't bother with a control).

 

[NickW]

Can't wait to get to this stage in my wine making! Experimentation is sounding good.

By the way - where do your keep all your brews whilst theyre fermenting? And at what temperatures?

Also - where do you store them when the've stopped fermenting and are just left for months and months?

Curiosity killed that cat I know :shock: - I cant stop asking questions

 

[percival]

We have what estate agents call bedroom 3. but in reality is kind of like a shoe box. we have a desk and single bed in there and thats where i 'live' quite a lot. It has a heater, but i keep it off. The room temperature is probably therefore pretty steady. i cant tell you exactly what it is. but when i sit in there i always have a jumper on, and sometimes a hat too! so its not quite a normal comfortable room temp. this is where my brews are while they ferment. So they ferment quite slowly. They stay in here until i can bothered to move them. In the past this has been an empty cupboard in the bedroom, which has no radiator, is biggish, and is chilly. The cupbaord door keepts the temp damn near constant i guess. Despite this it doesnt seem to chill the wine enough to make any appreciable difference to clearing. so the next plan is take conditioning demijohns down stairs to where i have made a kind of mini-cellar under the staircase. no heating, VERY chilly, and apart from when the front door briefly is opened pretty constant temp. I've got a thickish cloth covering the space so that it'll prevent draughts.

i've heard it said a good cook cooks the same things often, rather than many things afew times. and most people seem to understand what thats about. those fine changes you make after 10's or 100's of iterations are what makes you into an expert if you are so inclined to observe and tweak etc. Thats how i treat my homebrewing to an extent. i don't bother (yet) with measuring OGs, temperatures, etc and keeping meticulous notes. Rather i tend to just take my time, use simple recipes, cut down the variables that way, use varieties of ingredients (kind of like a blend, so for rosehips pick big ones, little ones, red squishy ones, red firm ones etc. for oranges use all sorts too). so aiming at an average sort of composition that i can reproduce fairly reasonably without having to worry about precise dates and varieties which, for me, would likely just become a pain in the butt to reproduce.

having said all that i do fully expect that in time my record keeping will get more detailed, as will my recipes, ingredients and methods. This is an ongoing process. But i don't think it will be anything like the lengths some of the uber brewers go to on this forum, and respect to them for how they do it! i suppose you could say my methods are a black-art compared to others' science ;-)

i hope this helps. you may not want to go this route (you seem more scientific in your approach) but it is a route that can produce reliably good results, and while its not for everyone it shows that there is a method to suit everyone!

The two basics that i stick by are sterility and time/patience. Leaving a brew for extra months of conditioning, in my opinion, makes more difference than subtle tweaks in the process. at least for what i make!

 

[NickW]

I'm a sucker for questions I know!

I'm not so much scientific, its more "Am I doing this right?".. ".. is there a certain way or measurement that is deemed as correct?"

Hard to explain.

But I guess you room is hitting 15'c or less if you need to wear a jumper! A guess a slwo fermentation can be very beneficial.