It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

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MickDundee

MickDundee

Landlord.
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Gingerbread spiced brown Ale is today's brew.

3.75kg Crisp pale ale malt
1kg Vienna
150g crystal
65g chocolate malt
100g Amber malt

16g Admiral for 60mins
16g Challenger at flameout

Last 5 mins:
2tsp ground ginger
1.5tsp cinnamon
0.5tsp each nutmeg and allspice

Mash at 69
Target SG 1.049
Target FG 1.011
Target ABV 4.93%
Ferment at 18 with CML Real Ale yeast

IMG_2491.jpg
 
I forgot to put the false bottom in my boiler! Only realised when I went to the kitchen to pour the grains in! #prayforthegrainbag
 
Damn you:mrgreen:
i am now getting a brew on myself.
I really like Challenger hops but never used them like yourself as a late addition,soooooooooooooooooooo,doing an all Challenger brew:mrgreen:
 
Hit my target SG (1.050), but only ended up with about 17L or so in the fermenter. As a christmas beer it has a limited life span anyway so it's fine, I'll do 2 minikegs for me and should get plenty of bottles to give to friends and family.
 
Clint said:
Sounds great! Who supplies your malt? Is that a custom ale kit?
Click to expand...

Yeah it's a GEB custom kit. I'm fairly lazy and hate weighing out the gain, and it means I don't need to buy bags of specialty grains I might not use very often!
 
Decent sized krausen when I woke up this morning, so the CML yeast has worked super fast. It's bizarre getting a whiff of the fermenting beer and smelling cinnamon and nutmeg instead of hops or malt!
 
MickDundee said:
Hit my target SG (1.050), but only ended up with about 17L or so in the fermenter. As a christmas beer it has a limited life span anyway so it's fine, I'll do 2 minikegs for me and should get plenty of bottles to give to friends and family.
Click to expand...

My wife is liking the look of this recipe, but I know she'll just want a glass or 2 and leave the rest to me! What was your target batch size? I'm thinking of scaling it down to a 10l batch. Do those spice flavours survive the boil and fermentation? I haven't tried adding spices before. Should be fun!
 
mcphail said:
My wife is liking the look of this recipe, but I know she'll just want a glass or 2 and leave the rest to me! What was your target batch size? I'm thinking of scaling it down to a 10l batch. Do those spice flavours survive the boil and fermentation? I haven't tried adding spices before. Should be fun!
Click to expand...

Recipe was for 20L. I've never used spices either and didn't think it sounded like very much, but my fermenting cupboard definitely smells like Christmas!

I'd also read that molasses helps bring out the gingerbread flavour but didn't want to mess about with the beer too much - I'd already modified a brown Ale recipe to include Vienna and Amber to give it a biscuity flavour.
 
Bottled it tonight. FG was only 1.014 so I’ve reduced the amount of priming sugar just in case, but I’m pretty sure it’s finished - 71% attenuation - I didn’t think I’d mashed high enough to give 1.014 though. It gives me a final ABV of 4.7% which is nice and sessionable for Christmas drinking!

Early tasters were very promising. The Christmas flavour is definitely there, big enough to be obvious but subtle enough that it doesn’t overpower. Looking forward to having a proper try in December!
 
Sounds good, so you reckon the level of spicing is probably about right?
 

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