Christmas Crippler

[Jovial_Monk]

I have a bottle of 12.1% spiced lager sitting in the fridge, for drinking Christmass Day

Brewed it last December, Munich & Vienna malts, caramunich, caravienna

Anyway, recipe is not important, With 15 mins left of the boil I added

Cardamom 5 or 6 pods
Mace couple of tsp
Cloves half a dozen
Coriander tablespoon
nutmeg one whole
Cassia (vietnamese cinnamon, the real cinnamon goes way bitter in a beer) 1 stick
star anise 5 small stars
peppercorns 6

all crushed up roughly in a mortar and pestle
lagered 4 months

The spices had mellowed and the hops and beer flavors were coming through last time I sampled a bottle two months ago.

While I am sipping great lager, I will crack a few nuts, nibble some spiced christmass cookies and crystallised ginger.

How Christmassy can a beer get?


Now a note for those wanting to make a Christmass beer: hop it up!

Yes you friends can't stand bitter beer, but they won't be drinking it for 12 months, will they? By that time a lot of the hop bitterness has mellowed into flavor compounds and the beer will be luscious. The beer can do with a fair bit of hops to survice the 12 months storage. I bittered my lager with 250g 2% Hallertau pellets. So make it strong and make it hoppy and spice it up






Jovial Monk

 

[GSRman]

Well, i couldn't wait any longer (wanted to know if the crippler was drinkable...) so i had some last night that was a bit flat, but cold... its pretty good... im not going to go raving about how great it was.. but much better than i was really expecting... the bitterness is about right, its got a bit of a fruity winey taste to it... (that was to be expected) but overall its not a bad arse kicking drop...

 

[GSRman]

Well, one year on i cracked the second last tallie of this beast, it hasn't improved with age, no real bad faults i can pick, (a bit buttery) winey, not that pleasant to drink, for a laugh im going to try and culture the yeast out of it...

 

[kook]

The Nag's Head pub at Glebe had a Christmas Pudding Stout at one of their recent tastings.

Wasabi was there and reckoned that it actually tasted of Christmas Pudding!

Now how the heck did they do it?

I've had quite a few winter seasonal or christmas beers over here that have tasted like fruitcake.

A lot of the fruity character comes from the yeast, and sometimes from fermentation or aging in pre-used oak..

 

[RobW]

I have a bottle of 12.1% spiced lager sitting in the fridge, for drinking Christmass Day/

/The spices had mellowed and the hops and beer flavors were coming through last time I sampled a bottle two months ago.

JM
I made a similiar brew recently & after a few weeks in cc & 1 week in the bottle the dominant flavour is cloves. Can I expect that to settle over time & let the other ingredients come through? It had from memory 5 or 6 whole cloves in the boil & again in secondary.

 

[Jovial_Monk]

The cloves were the predominant flavor, the lager was like a liquid fruitcake, in the first bottle I tasted only a month or so after bottling. There was still some clove aroma in the next bottle tasted a month later but after that the cloves disappeared quickly.

What other spices did you use? I wonder what the effect of adding spices to the secondary will do?

JM

 

[RobW]

It had cardamon, cinnamon, vanilla and orange zest. The spices were all added to the boil & in secondary in equal amounts. During fermentation the fruitcake smell was quite strong. The base is an amber ale and that tastes OK once you ge through the cloves so if they settle down I'm hoping it will be OK.

 

[Darren]

Tom,
You keep going on about this big spiced lager. I tried that beer at Jayses house early around June this year.
Quite frankly it was possibly the worst beer I have ever tried.
The ferment must have stopped at 1.050 and the spices just didnot do the beer justice.
That beer will never improve. I doubt you could get the drunks in the parks to drink that beer.
Anyone attempting this beer should use atleast half as much spice as Tom has added
Also, a lager that starts at 1.100 or more will need a huge amount of yeast. I suspect you added about a tenth as much yeast as you should have.
Sorry Tom, I would suggest dumping it and trying again.
cheers
Darren

 

[Vlad the Pale Aler]

Our Christmas bevvy will be a strong belgian that missed the fg a bit and came out at 1.020

Marris otter
melanoidin
caramalt
carapils
lyles golden syrup

styrian gldgs & saaz to 21 ibu

whitelabs abbey ale yeast

I think I'll call it " Dubbel Demerit" in honour of our finest boys in blue and their obsession with the motorist.

 

[Doc]

Here is my Xmas Bender recipe from last year.
Had to rack it a couple of times as it was crawling out of the fermenter.
Tasted great and placed at Bathurst this year in the Belgian Strong category.

Doc's Xmas Bender Belgian Strong Ale

Muntons Nut Brown Ale kit
Morgans Wheat Malt 500g
Morgans Lager Malt 500gr
LDME 1kg
Morgans Extra Pale Malt Extract 1.5kg
Billingtons Natural Dark Muscovado Sugar 500gr
7gr Hallertau pellets 9%
7gr Stickelbrackt pellets 11.8%
7gr Tettnanger pellets 5.5%
19.7 Litres water.

Wyeast 3787 Belg. High Gravity Yeast

SG 1072
FG 1011

Just a big dump and stir job.

Enjoy,
Doc

[post="6070"][/post]​

Resurrecting a real old thread here.
In drinking all the old bottles of brew in my shed to make room and get bottles for the Xmas case, I stumbled on a bottle (750ml) of this.
I was planning on measuring out great for this weekend, but now I'm thinking of slothing in front of the cricket :lol:

Doc

 

[BigAl]

Beer and cricket, what a combination..... :lol:

 

[Mullet]

Here is my Xmas Bender recipe from last year.
Had to rack it a couple of times as it was crawling out of the fermenter.
Tasted great and placed at Bathurst this year in the Belgian Strong category.

Doc's Xmas Bender Belgian Strong Ale

Just a big dump and stir job.

Enjoy,
Doc

I decided to give Docs recipe a go, off to BYOAH I went to have a chat. What I have in the fermenter at the moment is;

Muntons Nut Brown Ale kit
Black Fern unHopped Wheat Malt 500g
Coopers Amber Malt 500gr
LDME 1kg
Morgans Unhopped Extra Pale Malt Extract 1.5kg
Belgian Candy Sugar 500gr
10gr German Hershbrucker pellets
10gr Styrian 2005 pellets
Water to make up 23L.

22g T-58 Yeast

SG 1074
FG ?

Went off as soon as the yeast hit it and has calmed down now to a subtle bubble. I gave it a bit of a shakeup this arvo to check what was going on and all seems good. Interested to give it a whirl when it is ready. Guesstimated to be about 9- 9.5% depending on the FG...

Cheers!