Which is your preference? Do you sanitize with a grain alcohol like vodka, or just dump them straight into secondary? I am currently soaking mine, but the volume of vodka it takes to cover four ounces of them has me wondering if I really want to dump that much vodka in my beer. Any thoughts? As for the peanut butter powder, I'm just going to dump and hope with that. We'll see.
You could strain off some of the vodka after soaking if it really seems like a lot. It would probably be o.k. either way, though. My personal experience with additions is limited to stuff I threw in right before the end of the boil.
I'd say the volume was about 3 ounces. I'll likely drain it off, but I'm thinking that may also take away some of the chocolate. It's a fairly big imperial stout to begin with, so maybe I'll just dump it all in and hope the vodka gets lost in the beer.
For any 5 gallon batch if you add 3 oz of a 40% spirit you are only upping your ABV by 0.1875%. Completely unnoticeable. Dump it all in. If you don't you will lose the flavor that you are trying to add.
Unless you have a very low ABV beer or there is something scary growing on the nibs I wouldn't worry. The alcohol and acidity will give you a lot of protection from cooties.
Not only does a high alcohol solution sanitize, but it also helps extract different compounds more efficiently than a lower alcohol solution. You might get better flavor results from vodka soaking.
I've done nibs three different ways... soaked in vodka, dipped in StarSan for 2 minutes and dumped in. It didn't make a difference, even tasting at six months out. One thing worth noting, pick up some good nibs. The first time I tried using nibs from Whole Foods and it resulted in a slightly astringent, thin, chocolate flavor (Not due to infection; just made the beer unpleasant). The last couple times I picked up some high quality ones and the results hugely improved over my first attempt, both in terms of flavor, aroma and mouthfeel.
I had been vacillating between draining and pitching. In the end I had kind of figured I'd be better off pitching the whole shebang into secondary, then y'all had to go and get all science geeky and prove it to me. :-) Thanks, all. Now I just get to cross my fingers with the powdered peanut butter.
good call...all you're really doing with vodka is adding a bit of alcohol to the beer since vodka is a neutral spirit unlike rum or whiskey which has way more flavor associated with them - it's like adding tofu to a stir-fry, it's not going to affect the flavor. 3oz of vodka in 5gallons (or whatever the case may be) is really insignificant.
