So I've recently had a major decrease in income and the first thing to be hit is my homebrewing. So one of my best friends in a very kind gesture bought me a NB Brickwarmer Holiday Red Ale kit. Was wondering about throwing a cinnamon stick or 2 soaked in vanilla extract into secondary with it just to bump a little "holiday" into it. But I also want to taste the original recipe to get a measuring stick. So I was thinking of splitting the 5 gal batch when I secondary it. One with cinnamon, one oh natural. Any thoughts or opinions?
I think this is an equipment question. Do you have smaller carboys, two 3 gallon would be best? Would think if all you have are 5 gallon or 6 gallon carboy / bucket, that's going to be a lot of head space and possible oxidation for splitting the batch.
Another approach is to make a spice extract with vodka and add it according to taste during bottling. You brew the kit as described to the bottling stage, add the priming sugar to the bottling bucket (stir gently), bottle as many beers as you want with the original recipe, and then add the spice extract (stir gently) and bottle the remainder
Go buy five or so gallon jugs of apple cider from the store and drink them. You now have five one gallon fermenters. Ferment the batch out in a 6 gallon carboy, then rack one gallon to a jug as your unaltered control beer. Then rack the other four gallons, each to a single 1 gallon carboy with an adjunct (coffee, cinnamon, vanilla, oak, etc.). I've done this a bunch to try out adding things to secondary and its a nice way to learn on a budget without potentially having 3-5 gallons of weird beer to plow through.
I actually have 2 1 gallon glass wine jugs I've been saving for just such an occassion! I forgot til your post reminded me!
I have thought about doing this, but wondered if the bungs I use for my carboys would fit into the opening of the juice bottles.
I may go that route. Does the flavor dissipate quickly that way rather than leaving it on the spice for aging?
I've not done a comparison of approaches; I've only used spice extracts. I start soaking the spices in the vodka at the start of primary.
