Begin Brewing!

 A few months back, I saw one of David Heath's YouTube videos where he brewed a "Fast Christmas Beer" using a couple of methods to reduce brewing and fermentation time.  The recipe sounded interesting, so I decided to brew it for Christmas 2020.  Thanks to COVID-19, I won't have many opportunities to share it with others, but my wife and I will get to check it out. I deviated from the recipe in the video in that I elected to go for a 60-minute boil rather than boil the hops, orange peel, and cinnamon separately on the kitchen stove.  I also deviated slightly in using a mix of base malts that I needed to use up, rather than the straight up pale malt he used.  Otherwise, this is basically David Heath's recipe. I also decided to use Lutra Kveik yeast for half the wort and SafAle S-04 for the other half, just to see how the beer would differ with a different yeast.  Heath recommended Tormodgarden Kveik yeast, but also noted S-04 and US-05 as options if you didn...

Some time ago, I picked up a recipe for a Christmas ale called Bad Santa.  Thinking I had all the ingredients on hand, I decided to brew it, only to find that I did not have at least one of them - Munich Malt.  Since I'd already crushed some of the grains and mostly wanted to brew this to confirm that the Brewie+ is once again functional after recent repairs, I made some substitutions.  Given that I was no longer following the original recipe, I decided to rename it so as not to dishonor the original recipe's creator if this batch doesn't turn out. Ingredients 6 pounds Swaen Pilsner Malt 2 pounds Briess Pale Ale Malt 10 ounces Honey Malt 7 ounces Vienna Malt 1 ounce Aromatic Malt 4 ounces Crystal/Caramel 10L Malt 4 ounces Caramunich I Malt 0.3 ounces English Black Malt 7 ounces Maple Syrup (post-boil, pre-chill addition) 1 ounce German Northern Brewer hops @ 4.8% AA (60 min.) 1 packet Safale S-04 English Ale yeast 1/8 tsp. Brewtan B (mash wate...

Last year, I brewed a Christmas Ale extract kit from the good folks at Label Peelers. It made a really good Christmas Ale, especially after I dialed down the hops. This time, I want something more Belgian-like. I'm aiming for a nice malty base with a hint of chocolate. I'll use Magnum hops to bitter it, but Bramling Cross hops for flavor and aroma. Bramling Cross can impart fruity, citrus, blackcurrant, loganberry, gooseberry, and lemon notes to a beer - which I think will blend nicely with the spice mix. I'm planning to use almost the same spice mix as the Label Peelers kit from last year, but doubling the amount of cinnamon stick used to punch that up and dialing back the ginger by half. I'm also adding some nutmeg. Since I have a packet of Wyeast 3522 Ardennes yeast on hand, I'll use that for fermentation. This yeast is known to produce a balance of fruity esters and spicy phenols which will hopefully go well with the beer. Being a fan of Belgian style bee...

I've made a couple of attempts at Christmas ales that just didn't come close to what I wanted. The hops would be overwhelming everything, the spices undetectable, or the spice balance not quite what I was looking for. I decided it was time to try a kit, and the Label Peelers kit had great reviews. It's an extract kit, which I don't typically brew, so that meant a shift from my usual process. Ingredients 9 pounds Amber DME 1 pound Dark Candi Sugar (rocks) 1 pound Crystal 80L 8 ounces Chocolate Malt 2 tsp. Allspice 1 tsp. Cardamom Seeds 1 ounce Cinnamon Stick 1 ounce Sweet Orange Peel 0.50 ounces Ginger Root 0.25 ounces Magnum hops @ 12.3% AA (dropped from 1 ounce in the kit/recipe) 0.50 ounces Cascade hops @ 6.3% AA (dropped from 1 ounce in the kit) 0.75 ounces Cascade hops @ 6.3% AA (dropped from 1 ounce in the kit) 0.50 teaspoons Yeast Nutrient 1/2 Whirlfloc tablet 1 vial White Labs Clarity Ferm 1 packet Safbrew S-33 yeast The kit included 3 ...

The finished Autumn Brown Ale My wife and I enjoy the various Christmas Ales on the market.  I'm personally a fan of Hoppin' Frog's Frosted Frog, Scaldis Noel, Thirsty Dog's 12 Dogs of Christmas, and a few others.  Oddly, I've never brewed a Christmas Ale myself. I decided to give it a shot this year. What I came up with for a recipe is a bit of a "kitchen sink" kind of beer in terms of the malt portion of the recipe.  I had a number of malts that might have been getting stale sitting on the shelf, and which also might be good in a Christmas beer, so I assembled a recipe to use them.  If I was doing this again, with an agenda that didn't include getting rid of some possibly-older malts, I'd probably have a much simpler recipe.  Regardless, below is what I wound up putting together. Ingredients 4 pounds of Maris Otter malt 4 pounds of Belgian Pale Ale malt 1.5 pounds of Aromatic Malt 1 pound of Caramel 60L 1 pound of Caramel 80L 1 ...