Adding spices
I am making a rye bock and want to add some caraway seed to the boil to give it a little more rye bread-like flavor. My question is how much do I use and when? I have had good results with additions at 50 of a 60 minute boil. A half to an ounce crushed perhaps?
Brian Quinn
Princeton, New Jersey

Thanks for the good question. You are asking about how to approach recipe development. When I try things I have never done before I usually read as much as I can find about what others have done in similar instances. As much as I would like to think that I occasionally come up with a truly original idea, the fact is that with the long history of brewing, chances are that my latest and greatest idea has been proposed and probably tried sometime in the past.   

I think caraway seeds (actually the fruit of the plant Carum carvi) would add an interesting spicy, anise-like earthiness to your rye bock. Adding them toward the end of the boil is definitely the way to go if you want to retain the nice aroma associated with caraway. I have brewed many spiced beers and have always begun by finding high quality fresh spices from specialty spice houses because I figure that using good ingredients is putting my best foot forward. Almost without exception the intensity of the spices far exceeded my expectations based on the information I consulted before brewing.   

Unlike hops, recipes calling for spices do not provide any data, such as alpha acid units, to help the brewer determine how much to use based on the ingredient in hand. Not all spices are created equally and they vary just like hops. Factors such as variety, growing region and age affect spice intensity. Based on experience using, or more correctly over-using, freshly milled and properly stored spices, I now back off of published usage rates by about 50%. If the idea is worth repeating and the spice impact is too low you can always tweak up in the future. But once a beer is over spiced there is not much you can do to rescue the batch. I once remember making way, way too hot chili using habanero peppers and I attempted to dilute the chili with more tomato sauce andcrushed tomatoes. The end result was just a bigger batch of way too hot chili. As often is the case, less is more when it comes to using spices.