Hi all. I have acquired some dried juniper berries and plan to add some to a 5 gallon batch of IPA. Any suggestions for quantity?
I've tried using them a few times. It takes way more than you think for them to make an impression. 1oz is detectable, but if you're doing an IPA, might be tough competing with the hops.
Oh, the flavors will definitely work well when using floral/citrus/piney hops, cause those are the flavors found in gin. You'll just need to use a lot of juniper for it to be noticeable over all the hops. Maybe try 2oz.
My experience with using juniper in my home brew is use a little, let it sit and taste, then add more as necessary. It's not super potent at first, but it's always better to have to add more than turn your brew into Pinesol. Also, I crush the berries with the back of a knife before tossing them in.
A little goes a long way. The first time I used Juniper in a beer it was undrinkable, way too much juniper. I'd have to look back in my notes though, that was many moons ago. It was the recipe from the Joy of Homebrewing 1st edition. Charlie must like his junipers. I have had good beers with juniper, but they used restraint.
My apologies to Charlie. I looked up his recipe we used. It was from the 1984 version of his book, Goat Scrotum Ale, and it called for 1/4 cup of juniper berries. I found the brewing record from that batch we brewed in 1990, we added 1 cup of juniper berries. I have no recollection of why we added so much. But I remember it being a drain pour after awhile. There are two notes at the bottom of the page, one says too much juniper the second note 8 days later said it was better.... it wasn't... we were fooling ourselves.
More recently last year or so I used juniper berries in a gin barrel IPA. For that I made an infusion using vodka and the berries and then added to taste. That gives you much more control.
