Description
While green cardamom is best known for it’s use in Indian cuisine and chai tea, it’s a versatile spice for the adventurous brewer or distiller. It has a strong, resinous, slightly cooling flavour. It’s spicy character pairs well both with other aromatic spices, and with citrus.
Cardamom provides gins with a distinctive sweet spicy flavour, that works well with juniper and coriander. It’s a spice found in many contemporary gins. Use at approximately 100th the weight of juniper.
In brewing, it can provide floral, spicy notes similar to some English hops. Try adding up to 15g/20L crushed pods to the last few minutes of the boil.
It’s also a delicious addition to secondary fermentation of kombucha - a squeeze of ruby grapefruit or orange juice and a couple of crushed cardamom pods make a divine kombucha !
