While talking with a fellow homebrewer recently, we both agreed how easy it is to get into the rut of making the same old recipes, over and over. When you first start brewing, you feel adventurous and excited to try anything and everything you can get your hands on. Well, after a few years, and a couple batches that weren’t up to standard, you begin making your tried and true recipes only - rarely deviating from the handful of favorites that your friends ask for time and time again. You know the crowd pleasers, and it’s a risk to spend a lot of time and money experimenting with new flavors. But where is the fun in that? So I decided to pick a few herbs and spices that I had never used, and challenge myself to concoct recipes that incorporate these bold new flavors. Okay, maybe this is not new. Brewmasters have been creating glorious recipes with coriander and salt for hundreds of years. The style even has a specific name - Gose - a pale German beer made with Coriander and Sea Salt that is slightly sour.

Crushing coriander seeds gives off an aroma of citrusy-lemon goodness, and pairing that with sea salt makes for, quite possibly, the most refreshing beer you and your friends have ever tasted. Add an ounce of coriander and ½  ounce of sea salt in the last five minutes of your boil. You will not be disappointed. If you are an avid tea drinker, like I am, then you already know the magical aroma and flavor of the hibiscus flower. If not, let me fill you in. It is the most delicate balance of fruity and floral, with a slight sweetness to it. Adding an ounce or two in the last 10 minutes of your boil will get you a fruity, dark berry flavor with a good balance of sweetness and bitterness to it. It also adds a beautiful ruby hue to the beer. When added in the secondary, you get less of the red hue, but more of a strong, floral aroma. Either way, using this herb in a pale ale or wheat beer is a sure win. Juniper berries have been used in beer for centuries. Only fairly recently has it become the brewing norm to balance the maltiness of beer with the bitterness of hops.

Before hops were easily accessible, many brewers balanced that malt flavor with fruit and herbs - especially in northern Europe where hops scarcely grew. Juniper berries were not only used in beer, but also in ciders and mead. Native Americans have utilized Juniper for its healing powers and to relieve arthritis. The berries themselves are slightly sweet and crisp, with a faint aroma of pine. best wine areas in usaBecause of this, they are often used in seasonal holiday brews. top 10 family friendly wine farmsAdd up to one ounce in the last ten minutes of your boil.best red wine under 40 dollars Looking for that smooth, barrel aged flavor, but short on a barrel? Oak barrels can be expensive! If purchasing a cask is not in your future, try an oak alternative such as oak chips or oak essence.

Maybe not an herb or a spice, but American oak will give your brew a floral and crisp flavor, while French oak will give it more of a smooth, vanilla flavor. Use two cups of oak chips during the secondary of a five gallon batch, and leave the chips in until you achieve your desired level of oak intensity. If you are using oak essence, add four ounces to a five gallon batch, or to taste, whichever you prefer. Cardamom is a distinctive spice that is part of the ginger family, and of course, they pair very well together. Cardamom’s flavor is often described as “spicy cola”, and along with ginger, also tends to combine well with orange peel, cumin, and coriander. It is most often used in specialty Belgian and Holiday beers. Cardamom has a unique, spicy taste - and when using this bold spice, a little definitely goes a long way! Most brewers recommend using only ½ ounce of ground cardamom per five gallon batch of beer. Using ½ ounce of ginger will give you a spicy, but balanced flavor and aroma, and will make for a warm, festive beer - perfect for winter nights.

No one can resist chocolate - not even beer drinkers. Cacao nibs pair excellently with smooth, malty flavors, which makes them an excellent addition to a stout or porter. They also blend in and balance perfectly with fruity flavors, especially dark berries such as raspberry, blueberry, and cherry. They are positively delicious when combined with other extracts such as vanilla, caramel, and hazelnut. Regardless of the combination of flavors you use, cacao nibs make for a sure crowd pleaser. They are also extremely versatile - you can add an ounce at the end of your boil or use two ounces in the secondary. Chicory Root would be another great addition to a stout or porter. It is commonly baked, ground, and used as a coffee additive, or in many parts of the world, a coffee substitute. Chicory root’s slightly sweet, slightly bitter taste pairs well with coffee and chocolate malts. Chicory root is rich and robust, and is 70% soluable, so a little bit goes a long way. Try racking on to one ounce in the secondary, and leaving it there until you achieve your desired taste.

Herbs and spices can take an average homebrew and turn it into a heavenly homebrew. They can make an every day pale ale crisp and refreshing, or take an old tried and true porter recipe to a new level by making it rich and robust. If you haven’t dabbled with herbs and spices, now is the time to try - just make sure to bring enough for everyone. Join my mailing list for extra tips and offers. Hot tips and reports for industry professionals & keen amateurs.The tricky thing about wine—especially the fancy stuff—is that since it gets better with age, what you buy off the shelf isn't necessarily always at its peak. A few seconds with the Clef du Vin, though, will age it to perfection. And, if you're not careful, all the way around to bad again. The Clef du Vin, made by Peugeot (not the car company), is a novel device that simulates the bottle-aging of wine. For every one second you put this nifty wine key in contact with your wine (per 50 mL), it claims to mimic the process of aging it for one year.

So if you have a wine that would taste best in 2016, just expose it for a brief two seconds to the Clef du Vin, then like magic you have an aged wine akin to drinking it two years in the future. Bottle-aging is a common technique used to create smoother, more mature wines with rich complex flavors, one that normally requires nothing more than patience, and enough self-control not to drink your stock until it has reached peak maturity. Essentially, a wine's tannins are gradually thrown from harsh, astringent, and dry to smooth, voluptuous, and velvety. Now, if the latter descriptors sound more enticing, then I'd say you're likely a fan of bottle-aging whether you know it or not. There's a bevy of contributing factors to the infamous tannic quality of a wine, but more important than what causes them are how they affect the taste. The Clef du Vin, an unobtrusive metal stick that looks like you could flip mini-pancakes with it, supposedly mirrors the same effect of these long-developing tannins in just seconds.

It claims to do so by employing unique mixture of copper, gold, and silver, three metals that have a direct chemical reaction with the wine that forces rapid oxidation, accelerating a process that happens naturally when your wine is exposed to oxygen over time. Oxidation can be a tricky thing. Many red wines that contain high levels of tannin require air in order to "breathe" and "open up," otherwise they're considered "tight" and can taste quite dry (think about how some wines suck all the moisture out of your mouth). However, after a brief upward bump in its flavor profile from aeration, the wine begins an irreversible spiral downward. Think how you'll pour wine into a decanter to let it breathe, but not let it sit out overnight.Now if you could create a device that were to simulate this brief bump in such a predictive manner by creating softer, rounder tannins, you could achieve the effect of an aged wine before its downward trend. But does the Clef du Vin actually pull it off?Gizmodo stopped by a local wine store, D'España in Soho, to conduct our experiment of the Clef du Vin.

We had several seasoned wine veterans taste various bottle aging times affected by the Clef du Vin, and then did a blind tasting to see if anyone could tell the difference. The overall conclusions is that the device is definitely changing the profile of the wine, albeit mostly in aroma, but the biggest question we faced was: Was it a change for the better?First, we wanted to see how the Clef du Vin affected the composition of the wine to understand the chemistry going on behind the scenes. We picked a young Ribera del Duero (100% Tempranillo) from Spain that would require years of bottle aging before it reaches peak maturity. The wine we chose was an Aalto Ribera del Duero, 2011. We had a control glass, then 4 others that had been modified by the Clef du Vin (equivalent to three years, five years, seven years, and thirty years aging). Our expert panel agreed ahead of time that the optimal number of years to age this wine would be around three to five. The seven and 30 year glasses were to see how much downside came with overusing the Clef du Vin.The control glass was juicy, robust, and full of flavor;

however, it was obvious that the wine was tight and incredibly young. It would definitely benefit from a few years in a dusty cellar. The simulation of three years aging was miraculously different. The texture was transformed into something more velvety, soft, and smooth. There was also a significant change in its aroma. The next three age simulations, however, seemed wildly inconsistent. The seven year was oddly closer to the control, while the five and the 30 year both had a "tinny" or metallic taste. It's clear that overexposure is definitely a danger with the Clef du Vin, and exposure times should be considered carefully. Luckily, the product actually comes with a chart to guide you through the process, including different varietals and different exposure times that will tease out various flavors in the wine.Next, we used a lighter wine to conduct the same test. However, our test subject was blind-tasting the four glasses this time. The wine we selected was a Mencia from Bierzo, Spain—Palacios Corullon 2011—and we hid a control glass among the three affected glasses (three years, six years, and 15 years).

While we weren't able to effectively identify each of the glasses, differences between the four were apparent to every nose and palate that encountered them. In fact, the three year age simulation was resoundingly the favorite, suggesting an optimal exposure time of the Clef du Vin. The factors that go into what makes a wine taste a certain way are innumerable. We spoke at length with the good folks at D'España about what was happening inside our glasses and came up with some pretty good hypotheses. Zachary Moss, the store's purchasing director, concluded that the change was likely more of a strong olfactory suggestion more than anything else:"My guess is that the metallic component is a reactive metal that introduces ions into the wine. A similar analogy would be a copper mixing bowl adding ions to the albumin in egg whites making them fluffy when whipping them into a meringue. My assumption is that, by the addition of these charged particles into the wine, the volatile acids & esters that are dissolved in the solution are excited and thus vaporized.

This gives the consumer the impression of the wine 'aging' since the nose is immediately more open."The power of suggestion is an intimidating factor for many, especially in wine. Therefore, if someone says this will make your wine taste better, we tend to believe them. However, an olfactory change can't be overlooked as our sense of taste is highly connected to our sense of smell. Okay, so it works for the fancy stuff. What about the wine you're actually drinking?The wines we tested at D'España were higher-end, meant for at least a few years of aging, which isn't exactly your every day glass of red. So how does this thing work with your daily drink? I grabbed a bottle of Apothic Red 2012 and Yellowtail Shiraz to conduct my own experiment. I poured my control glass and then tasted the two wines. Both were jammy, pungently alcoholic, and so juicy and ripe that they were nearly sweet. Next, I carefully poured three glasses of each to expose to the Clef du Vin (two years, three years, and five years).