Grains of Paradise

I wanted to get into a local homebrew contest and I made a great Strawberry light pale ale a couple of weeks ago ( moderate to light body, sweet with a great nose ) and that is almost gone , so I wanted to enter that but the fruit beer category was a fruit and spice category. So I made a new batch tonight and changed my mash temp up a little bit and added 2 grams of grains of paradise to the 5 gallon batch to put a spice in it and when I took my OG reading after the boil, it tasted REALLY spicy. I fear that the G.O.P. will run over my sweet strawberries in the secondary. Was 2 grams to much?? Your thoughts…

I can’t say anything definitively because I’ve never brewed with GOP before, but I’m sure it will mellow over time, and maybe just after fermeting.

My first thought when I read your post though was that your first beer, just fruit, was probably okay to enter. If I had to guess, they are just combining the BJCP style guidelines for style 20: Fruit Beer, and style 21: Spice/Herb/Vegetable. A lot of times competitions will combine these categories because there won’t be a lot of entries for either. But I could be wrong.

When did you add them to the boil? 5min or less remaining in the boil would have been ideal.

Haven’t used them but I can say that I always try and err on the low side with spices. If it is really pronounced I would probably not add strawberries and just enter it as a spiced ale.

Yea I put 2 grams of G.O.P. 5 min till the end of the boil. Also this will be my first homebrew comp. and I guess it is not like a reagular comp. , the categories are pretty unique. But anyways it will be a good experience and I brew beer to share with my friends and family so I cant wait to share with some more people. Just hope I didnt F*** it up with the G.o.p…