Spiced Ale, no spice:(

[beerwench]

I did a Great Lakes Christmas Ale clone with an OG of 1.072 and an FG of 1.018…3 cinnamon sticks were added to the boil at 5 min and was 1.5 oz of peeled ginger cut into cubes. I tasted it last night (brewed on 11/20) and the gravity is 1.018, but I have no cinnamon or ginger flavor at all…I had my wife and mother in law try it also, and nothing…

I didn;t plan on racking this to a secondary as I was trying to bottle asap for christmas…so can I add some spice here?I don;t want to overdo it at this point, so I was thinking one whole sanatized stick and maybe a 1/2 oz of grated (sanatized ) ginger???

[dobe12]

I made NB’s winter warmer about a month ago. I bought whole dried cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, ginger & clove. I shaved down some of each using a micro-zester and added 1-1/2 tbls to the boil. Came out great.

I would suggest doing the same thing with your spices and adding to secondary. But not too much. If you can’t get the cinnamon to grate (I had trouble) use a coffee grinder.

[dobe12]

You may even want to consider boiling a little of the ground spices in just a little wort for just a few minutes to sanitize. Just a thought.

[bdaugherty]

you can try adding spices to some vodka. let them steep for a few days. then add the infused vodka to taste in the bottling bucket. i did this this year with a pumpkin spice beer and was pleased with the results

[bonzer]

Soak some spices in vodka for 10 days or so. Withdraw a measured sample of beer, and add the tincture 1/4 tsp at a time until you get the flavor you’re after. Scale that amount up to the entire batch and add at bottling/kegging. You can really dial in your spicing this way. I do it with my pumpkin ale. It’s so easy to over or under-do spices in beer.

[bonzer]

Doh! Ya beat me by 3 minutes.

[fimbrew]

I would have added them in the secondary.