'christmas In July' Beer?

[peas_and_corn]

Hey, was planning future brews (haven't been brewing much recently :angry: ) and wanting to make a batch of a christmas style beer, and thought that a clone of the Bah Humbug Christmas Ale would set me a challenge.

What do you reckon will make up a good recipe to copy this beer? AG please

 

[Adamt]

From Ratebeer...

"Commercial Description:
Winter Warmer.
Bah Humbug is a 6% abv brew using not just the traditional malted barley and hops, but also a big sprinkling of cinnamon. The effect of the cinnamon is to give a spicy, almost banana-like flavour as often found on German wheat beers; and this blends with the sweet-honeyed flavours of the Maris Otter barley to create a beer with all the fruit flavours of mince pies, Christmas Pudding and Christmas cake all rolled into one."

Not quite sure about the "Spicy, amost banana-like" bit :blink:. Maybe Maris Otter, 5-10% crystal, and a whole bunch of cinnamon sticks in the boil? No idea for the yeast though.

 

[mika]

Belgian Pale Ale yeast ? Or something in that vain. Make 6% on it's ear and enhance the spicy cinnamon ?

 

[bconnery]

It's an extact on a pale ale base but this recipe might give you some spice ideas...

It needed a long time to settle into a balance though, before that one spice or another dominated for a period.

http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...&recipe=171

 

[peas_and_corn]

hmm, I'll consider everything here- bconnery- looks like an interesting recipe! mika_lika- I'll probably use a belgian strain of some sort, and that one sounds interesing. Adamt- yeah, the banana part sounds a bit meh but I am overall looking for that 'pudding' flavour.

What level of IBUs should I be aiming for?

 

[brettprevans]

It's an extact on a pale ale base but this recipe might give you some spice ideas...

It needed a long time to settle into a balance though, before that one spice or another dominated for a period.

http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...&recipe=171

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?

 

[peas_and_corn]

I'd recommend replacing the light grain with liquid malt extract (there's a ratio of liquid L/kg, not sure what it is- same for dried kg/grain kg), and steep some crystal and munich for the darkness. However, if you don't want to steep grains yet, I'd handball the question to someone else

 

[bconnery]

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.

 

[Josh]

I was brewing a wit the other day but didn't have the coriander seeds required to suit my tastes. So I had a look in the cupboard and decided to throw in 7g ground cinnamon and 7g ground nutmeg along with the 3-4g coriander seeds and 35g dried orange peel I had left. 48% Pilsener malt, 50% Torrified wheat and some oats. Fermented with Wyeast 3944 Belgian Wit yeast has come down to 1.006 and ready to bottle.

Fairly spicy flavour and well fermented. I'm calling it a Whte Christmas.