Spiced Beer

This grouping uses the common or culinary meanings of spices, herbs, and vegetables, not botanical or scientific ones. In general, spices are the dried seeds, seed pods, fruit, roots, bark, etc. of plants used for flavoring food. Herbs are leafy plants or parts of plants (leaves, flowers, petals, stalks) used for flavoring food. Vegetables are savory or less sweet edible plant products, used primarily for cooking or sometimes eating raw. Vegetables can include some botanical fruit. This category explicitly includes all culinary spices, herbs, and vegetables, as well as nuts (or anything with ‘nut’ in the name, including coconut), chile peppers, coffee, chocolate, spruce tips, rose hips, hibiscus, fruit peels/zest (but not juice), rhubarb, and the like. It does not include culinary fruit or grains. Flavorful fermentable sugars and syrups (e.g., agave nectar, maple syrup, molasses, sorghum, treacle, honey) or sweeteners (e.g., lactose) can be included only in combination with other allowable ingredients, and should not have a dominant character. The ingredients listed here may be combined. The Fruit Beer category explains the distinction for culinary fruit. The added ingredients should be balanced with the base beer.