I recently brewed my Luchador en Fuego semi-clone. Last night I covered some ancho chiles, chocolate and cinnamon in vodka. My question is when I go to add it to the secondary, should I just dump the whole bowl in, vodka and all, or just add the soaked chilis, chocolate and cinnamon in a muslin bag?
Why not muslin? I use muslin bags (the long skinny ones) for dry hopping, dry beaning, oak cubing, and probably something I'm forgetting at the moment.
Because if you dryhop hops, you can kill two birds with one stone...seriously, muslin will work as long as you have no plans for the bags to do double-duty ...cheers
Well, ideally you can use a nylon bag for either (hops or other adjunct flavanoids, eg. oak, chiles, vanilla or coffee beans, etc.)...but using a muslin bag for hops (whole cone or pellets) is a deal breaker.
Because I have lots of muslin bags and they work for me. I'm trying to figure out what you have against them, making them a non-starter. Do you think they don't allow beer to flow through? That they impart some kind of flavor of their own? That they allow noticeable hop particles into the beer? I haven't found any of these things to be true.
I have used both muslin and nylon bags, but for the OP's original question, I wouldn't have any problem with adding everything, solids and vodka, and I would probably go commando and just dump it all in.
Bingo! Muslin is cotton and stretches out...at least most peoples' muslin I suppose under the right circumstances, a muslin bag (aka grain sock) could work...if you didn't fill it too full and didn't leave it too long and you were lucky If they work for you...great...but I think most people will say fine mesh nylon bags are superior (but more expensive) than grain socks
