I'm not big on brewing spiced beers, but I like much of Shorts' lineup. I know a few of you are AHA members, so I'm assuming someone has seen the recipe for a Nicie Spicie clone in the latest Zymurgy, in the article about using citrus in beer. Perhaps I'm just a cynic, but did anyone else think the spicing in that was off the charts? I know Shorts is known for that sort of thing, and yes I know the recipe supposedly came directly from them. But 4 ounces of coriander, 4 ounces of various peppercorns (flameout), and 4 ounces of citrus zest (secondary) in a 5 gallon batch? What, if any, adjustments would you make, on the caveat of knowing you're basing things off a written recipe rather than having brewed the beer (or did you brew that beer)? My thought was to back the coriander way, way off (down to 1 ounce), back the pepper up to 2 or 3 ounces, and the citrus the same as the pepper. Or do you think I'd be better off just going with the crazy-looking recipe and saving the adjustments for the second time I brew it, provided there ever is one? Thoughts?
I thought that recipe looked way over the top and personally would cut the coriander to 10g and the zest to 1oz for a 5 gallon batch. Then again, I would consider my recipe balanced, rather than nicie spicie!
Seems like a bit much to me. I like around 4 GRAMS of peppercorns. Then again, I've never had this beer.
Coriander (and peppercorns for that matter) are ingredients that really depend HOW you add them...thoroughly crushed, lightly crushed, fried, not fried, etc.
Good to know I'm not the only one who looked at that and thought "would you like a little beer to go with your spices?" :-) I'll cut it back. I've made beers with black pepper before, and underspiced those, so I think the 2-3 ounces would work for that. I find that very little coriander goes a long way. And since I'm using cold pressed oils instead of actual zest, your guess is as good as mine as to how much I should use (I'm thinking 1/4 to 1/2 tsp each for the orange and lemon). Should be entertaining if nothing else.
that seems like quite a lot of oil to add, this link gives average yield of oil from oranges to be around 0.2-0.4g oil/100g dry peel This says sweet orange oil is 0.873g/cc, so 1/2tsp = 2.46cc = 2.14g oil = 535g - 1070g peel (depending on yield) so if you add 1/2tsp oil, and all the number hold (depening on oil yield) it would be like adding anywhere from 1.2-2.4lbs of dried orange peel, which is also known as a metric ass load........
I'd also add that in my experience with essential oils you can ruin your chances at carbonation. I added peppermint oil to a melomel that I wanted to add a tiny bit of effervescence to and had 0 luck, yet the bottles with no oil carbed up fine I looked up citrus oils and it seems that they could be great antifungals (link below) so if you decide to add the metric ass load, you might want to force carb it http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956713507002629
Hmm... I'd read that the oils were roughly 1/4 tsp being the same as an ounce of fresh zest. I think I 'm using a different product, one intended for baking. And yes, I'll definitely be force carbing.
