I like the idea of doinf an xmas brew esp as it will be my little girl's first xmas (not that she'll be drinkning the brew of course!)
I havent done a full extract before and just wanted to know your thoughts on the difficulty of replicating the Chrismoose Ale? and whether there were some more 'complete' instructions available?
It's a pretty easy beer to make, and extract brewing is easy as long as you've got a decent sized pot to go on the stove, 10-15L ideally. Steeping grains remains the same.
I generally steep by starting in cold water and slowly raising the temperature until about 75C. Or when it starts to feel really hot if you don't have a thermometer... I then strain this into my boil pot to start the boil.
Here's my notes. I don't know how familiar you are with the @time remaining recipe notation but at the risk of telling you what you already know @45 just means with 45 minutes remaining in the boil...
Here's the method with hop additions. When adding extract it's a good idea to remove the pot from the heat while stirring it in to avoid scorching. There's no need to use dried and liquid extract as I have here, I just had that at the time...
Method:
Steep grains. Strain into boil pot. Add approx. 2L boiling water
Boil some water, Honey, orange rind, juice & spices in separate pot for 45 minutes. (This can be done at the same time as the main boil)
10g Hersbrucker 20g
Hallertau@45. 1kg DME @30. 2kg LME 25g Hersbrucker 20g Hallertau @15. Mix in spices etc. @ end.
Topped up with very chilled water to 23L.
Fermented warmish, about 22C I think, trying to get lots of character out of the T58, which I think is ideal for this sort of beer. Either that or K97. Liquid wise a belgian could do it nicely, or an english ale yeast. But t58 is perfect in my book.
Hope that answers all your questions. If not, drop me a PM or else I can put more in this thread.
I ground most of the spices up a bit in a mortar and pestle. Some of them, like the cinnamon are a bit of an approximation.
If you do want this for christmas I would recommend you make it no later than early July. Mid June was when I did and it was pretty much perfect, maybe a tiny bit past when it was best.The spices were all present but one no longer dominated as they had at times earlier.
Late June would probably be ideal.