What's the best technique to add chamomile?

I've made a Witbier with tangerine peel and coriander. Though Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing suggests chamomile as a good "secret ingredient" for Witbiers, I didn't have any on hand when brewing, so i missed my chance to add it to the boil (and I've wondered how well the taste and aroma would persist anyway).

So now i have a few options:

  1. Add it directly to the secondary (akin to dry hopping), maybe after a little boiling to avoid introducing bacteria
  2. Make some chamomile tea and add that at bottling
  3. Make a spice potion with vodka or the like, and add that at bottling time

The question: which is most likely to impart the best taste and (secondarily) aroma? And how much would you suggest for a 5 gallon batch?

I want it to still taste like beer, not chamomile tea, but I'd like to impart a reasonable amount of flavor to the result.

Concerns I respectively have for the the above options are:

  1. I'm not sure the essence will get released without boiling.
  2. I've seen other recommendations for this, with some complaining the result was too strong.
  3. I've seen one opinion elsewhere that this spice potion approach doesn't wind up producing much flavor.

Topic secondary-fermentation flavor spices homebrew

Category Mac


Go with the tea. You'll extract the flavor and sanitize the chamomile.

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