I am brewing an AG Holiday Spiced Ale and my question is after my 10 minute cinnamon stick addition to the boil do I toss it after cooling or leave it in the fermenter. Never brewed with this type of spice before, thanks for the help
I'm not sure there would be any negative consequences if your cinnamon stick did go into the fermentor. I'm also not sure it would do that much more for it either since I would assume most of the flavor and aroma was extracted out of it while you had it in the boiling wort. However, typically when I have used cinnamon sticks in brewing, after chilling I left the cinnamon stick behind in the kettle. I was doing a Pumpkin Spice ale that used a bunch of other spices too, and what didn't get completely dissolved into the wort by the boil, came out. So the whole cloves, cinnamon stick, parts of the ground ginger root that got trapped in the bag I was using all came out of the beer after chilling and did not go into the fermentor.
I'd leave it in the kettle. It wouldn't hurt anything if you moved it to the fermenter, but I'm pretty paranoid of overspicing beers
In my experience, you get more woody-earthy-corky notes in your beer when you leave the sticks in the fermenter. (I always attributed that to cinnamon being bark and therefore not much different than other wood additives, but that's purely speculation.) Depends on what you're looking for.
Main Street Brewing in Dallas made a Cinnamon Porter back in 1995 anyone that can duplicate the recipe will have a WINNER on their hands
