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Brewchez' Holiday Ale
Here it is. Its a little early to be thinking spiced Holiday beers but I brew this in early october, and let it rest in secondary until early december. You can bottle it then, but I keg it up and force carb, then fill bottles off the keg.
Brewchez' Spiced Burboned Oaked Holiday Amber
For 6.5 gallons final volume.
8 gallon run off, 90min boil.
Anticipated OG is 1060-1065
Mash efficiency is 75%
12lb American 2-row (or 7.5lb DME)
2lb crystal 40L
1lb crystal 60L
0.125lb crystal 120L
0.125lb chocolate malt
1.0oz Nugget (12%AA, pellets) 60-min
0.5oz Nugget (12%AA, pellets) 15-min
4.0oz American Oak Chips
8.0oz Burbon/Whiskey (see comments below)
1/4 tsp cinnamon-ground fresh
1/8 tsp nutmeg-ground fresh
Mash in at 154F, 90 minute mash.
Boil for 30min, then start with 1st hop addition.
Irish Moss at 20-min mark.
Yeast WLP002 (or WY1028)
Use two vials of yeast or pitch a hearty dose of yeast cake from a previous batch.
Primary ferment at 68F for two weeks.
During primary:
Steam Oak chips in water steamer on high heat, 5 minutes. Steam chips, do not submerge.
Place oak chips and burbon in a clean mason jar, cap immediately. Let sit in cool place during, primary ferment. Right before transfer to secondary strain the oak out, add spices to the burbon and shake well (This will sterilize the spices).
Rack beer to secondary, dump in oak burbon spice mix. Secondary for two months at 68-70F.
Notes on secondary and Burbon:
OK so I don't actually use burbon, I have found that Johnny Walker Red Label, is sort of smokey and hot, but when mixed with the beer it ages out to a smooth burnon like quality. But this is where the extended secondary comes in, it really helps move that HOT nasty red label to the back of the beer, but it keeps a just noticable supporting role. You can leave the OAK in during secodary if you want a stronger oak flavor, its an experiment I haven't done. When adding the burbon mix you can prime and bottle right away. Then bottle condition for two months and get the same effect. But there is something about bulk aging the entire 6 gallons together that just works for me.
If you try this beer, let me know what you think. Maybe I'll "brew log it" here when I do it.
I anticipate I'll brew this during the second week in october.
Thanks for posting this. I had been thinking about a holiday ale, and was having a hard time deciding if my recipe jsut had too many spices in it. I will definately put this on the list for October.
That sounds really good....then again, most of the receipes I see here look really good......I need more brew time...I will certainly try to get this done...maybe this and that Scotch Ale we were talking about in the other thread for the holidays....mmmm, I can taste it now......
looks tasty. is this something that you generated from you sick, twisted mind or did someone clue you in to this? :-)
since i'm lazy, i don't mash. do you think a variation with extract would work just as fine? although, that is a pretty hefty amount of crystal used.
Brewchez - what is your expected IBU for this recipe? I probably will do a 4gal boil, and top off to 6gal in for the primary.
djgbrewing wrote:
Thanks for posting this. I had been thinking about a holiday ale, and was having a hard time deciding if my recipe jsut had too many spices in it. I will definately put this on the list for October.
A note on spicing.
I have developed this beer over the past several years. When I first started with a holiday brew I had cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, all spice and bitter orange peel in there. As the beer aged (5months) in the bottle it started to taste like crest. Over time, and research, I began to get simple and stick with just enough of what I felt was the core "holiday" spice essence. The result is obviously just cinnamon and nutmeg.
djgbrewing wrote:
Brewchez - what is your expected IBU for this recipe? I probably will do a 4gal boil, and top off to 6gal in for the primary.
Anticipated IBUs for this beer is around 40, (calculated by Tinseth method).
I try to keep it low so the spices come out because their quantity is rather delicate I think.
But there needs to be enough IBU to balance against the crystals and the small caramelization during a full 90min boil. I boil pretty hard to go from 8 gallon run off to 6.5 gallons wort.
If you didn't want to do a full 90min, I think that 60min with 0.25lb of crystal 120 would be fine too.
Ok, I'm going to have to try this. I'll even offer to leave the oak in secondary, since I love whiskey. What are the guidelines for trimming back recipes for smaller setups though? I'll only be able to do about 5 gallons at this point.
I'm still an extract-with-specialty-grains brewer and don't have good a good setup for all grain.
-R
If you are asking how to do this with extract, just substitute the 12lb two row with 7.5 lbs DME.
If you are asking how to make this a 5 gallon recipe rather than 6.5, I would jump on the Recipitator website. http://hbd.org/recipator/
Enter the recipe with the extract instead of 2 row. There is a scaling calculator on the spreadsheet somewhere. You can use straight math to scale the malts and the water, but the hop additions are tricky especially if you aren't doing full wort boils. If you wanted to scale this to 5 gallons and do a concentrated boil (ie. boil 3 gallons and add it to 2 gallon cold water) I would leave the hops at 1 and 0.5 oz to counter the difference in utilization with the concentrated wort. (but a calculator would be more exact)
However, if you are doing full boils, dumping out 1 gallon of the wort would only be wasting a few bucks. Personally I wouldn't worry about it.
I've got to do concentrated, since I have neither the space nor equipment for a full-sized.
Anyhow, thanks!
-R