I made a two teas using different quantities of mustard seeds, caraway seeds and a bit of salt. Ground the spices with a mortar and pestle. Boiled in a flask for 10 minutes and chilled to 80F in 10 minutes.
I have to say thanks to troybinso for the caraway seed tip. It definitely gives rye bread it’s signature flavor. 1tsp/liter produced good flavor. 2tsp/liter was robust and probably too much.
The mustard seed was disappointing. The first tea had 1tsp/liter of mustard seed. The second had 4tsp/liter. It made the water look super yellow, but didn’t provide much in the way of mustard flavor or aroma. It had a subtle savory flavor that wasn’t bad, but not really mustardy.
Screw the seeds. I’m going to use prepared mustard! Probably a blend of yellow and spicy brown.
I wonder if the mustard seed needs more extraction time. I have a bag of mustard seeds in my pantry and that whole corner of the pantry smells (deliciously so) like mustard.
The second tea with more mustard seed was boiled for 15 mins and chilled for 10. The bag of mustard seeds that I bought yesterday has no aroma at all. It was only $1.50 for 6oz. I’ll try one more mustard seed source, thanks.
Did you crack the seeds? You really aren’t going to get much out of them whole unless they sit for a long time. Also, heat inactivates a lot of the compounds in mustard - better to do a cold steep for that one. You could always use something like Coleman’s mustard powder in place of the seeds, too.
Yes, I ground the seeds. I bought some new seeds yesterday. They have a lot more aroma than the first batch of seeds which basically had none. I bought some powder too. Haven’t tried the new stuff yet. I’ll try a hot steep in water and a cold steep in beer.
I tried several things with mustard powder and ground mustard seeds. I cooked with it, made several teas boiled for various times and cold steeped it in some Duvel.
Cooking with it would produce a huge and savory mustard aroma for about 1 minute of sauteed heat time with stir fried veggies. Then it would disappear completely and leave behind very little flavor or aroma.
Boiling hot steeps produced minimal flavor and aroma with 15, 10, 5 and 0 minute boils followed by a fast cool. Cold steeping in beer produced a nice sweet mustard aroma like honey mustard after 24 hours and a light mustard flavor. Cold steeping is the method I’ll use for this beer.
Mustard powder produced better results than seeds with less effort. I’ll add mustard powder to the primary after fermentation is complete and bottle the next day.
Thanks erockrph for suggesting the cold steep and making me think about the aromatic and flavor volatility of mustard powder in the presence of heat and thanks again to reverseapachemaster and troybinso.