When making spiced winter ale do u leave the spices in during fermentation or do you strain them out?
In my experience the later the spice addition the more pronounced it will be. They tend to fade quickly, so a spice mixture with vodka at kegging/ bottling time can boost those flavors in the final product. All depends on what you’re trying to do.
I just brewed this yesterday. I siphon through a mesh strainer for all my batches, including this one. I was a little leery of leaving them in during the whole fermentation due to a bad experience I had doing that with a hard apple cider. It was really undrinkable.
I added the mulling spices at flame out per the directions and it had a nice mild spiciness. If that fades too much during fermentation, I have mulling spices on hand already and will make up an extract using some cheap vodka before kegging.
