There’s a Penzey’s spice shop in town that I drive by all the time. I finally went in today because I wanted to try some chamomile in a wit. Turns out they don’t carry it (and I really don’t think I’ll be shopping there again; the place has the floor space/product ratio of an Apple Store). The one nice thing was that they have sniffable jars of each of the spices, and I ended up getting some whole green cardamom.
Anyone know how much of this to use in a beer? My first instinct is to treat it like coriander (1/4 oz at flameout) but I was wondering if maybe that would be too much. Everything I can find about cooking with it says it’s incredibly potent. So maybe I’ll start with more like 3-5 grams. Which also brings up the question of what I’m going to do with 1.7 ounces of the stuff.
I used cardamom in a cherry wit partial mash years ago. I knew I had used it at one point and had to go find my old brewing notebook.
I used 0.75 oz of the stuff in a five gallon batch. I added that at 5 minutes before the end of the boil along with some black pepper. My initial tasting notes after 2 weeks in the bottle said the spice was too strong but after four weeks was more in balance. I think I probably used too much but I do remember enjoying this beer.
I’ve used Cardamom for a few beers now. It depends if you’re crushing it up. I crushed some, and added .5 oz to the boil for 10 minutes, it gets bitter quick. Maybe .5 oz, crushed, added after the boil, or even in the secondary. Enjoy! Black Cardamom is interesting as well, gives it a more menthol flavor.
If you don’t like it in your beer, it goes great in sauces (& BBQ sauce) and stews. Not too much, though. Also, its used alot in baking (in Scandinavia).
Cardamom has always struck me as an immensely intense spice…I would try cooking with it a lot first, getting a feel for it via food, before formulating a beer recipe.
I picked up some black cardamom which I gather is dried over fires and does have a bit more metholly aroma.
I used 0.5 oz of Cardamom. My recipe called for 0.5 oz of Coriander at 15 mins. I think it would have been a good beer if not for the Cardamom but it really wasn’t drinkable with it. I even tried to let it age for a while but that didn’t help. I finally gave up on it because I needed the bottles.
Mikey, I didn’t save the yeast and have not tried to brew that recipe (or style) again. It’s really not one of my favorite styles and was brewing it for my wife. I have been thinking about giving it another crack though but I would have to modify the recipe as I’ve since moved on to all-grain.
Thanks to everyone for the feedback. I’ll be brewing this in the next week or two and will probably use 5 g to start, and add more in the fermenter if needed.
I tried an aggressive amount of cardamom in a wit I brewed today - .33 oz at 5 min - definitely too much, at least from a pre-fermentation taste. Assuming it doesn’t dissipate, I doubt I would use more than .1 oz again in the future, and I love cardamom.
Surprisingly, my over-cardamom wit tastes pretty good. I would still use less than I did, but I think as many as 10 pods or so for a 5 gal batch is fine if you’re a big cardamom fan.
I ended up using 5 g of green cardamom. Cracked the pods open and dumped them and the seeds in at flameout, and left them in for the whirlpool/chill, 40 minutes total. The overall result is subtle but really nice. When I went to taste the hydrometer sample today, I actually forgot I had spiced this batch and was trying to figure out what was slightly “off”. So I think in the future I might go with as much as 10 g for a more pronounced flavor.
Picking up on an old thread, I’ve used 5 grams of cardamom in 7.5 gallons of my Ginger Wit, which as been brewed by brewers around the world with good results. The recipe (from 1995) is at Ginger Wit.
The recipe also uses fresh ginger, coriander and grains of paradise. Pretty tasty, refreshing summer beer.
Wow. Here I thought was the first one to come up with a Ginger wit idea. Jeff beat me to it by several years. Oh well, at least the recipe is not the same.