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**Fordzilla** · 12-07-2012, 01:19 PM

I cracked the first one last night after about 2 1/2 weeks in bottles. It was delicious. Lots of vanilla flavor, more than I was expecting. Very tasty though.

morticus · 12-07-2012, 03:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by daniel_conklin

Could someone please verify where the vanilla bean is used? Do you boil it in the tea or add it to the secondary?

I put mine in the secondary. Then I took it out of the secondary and put it in the tea after I took it off the boil. I ended up with the perfect amount of vanilla flavor.

**tre9er** · 12-08-2012, 02:13 PM

Mine has been about 3 weeks since brewing, cold crashing for the last week due to time constraints. Today I'll boil the tea and rack this to kegs. Once it's carbed I'll start sampling it and plan to bottle off the keg about a 12-pack or so to take with us on Christmas Vacation trip to Georgia (driving) for relatives. Hoping it's mellowed by then, about 2 weeks from now.

**twofieros** · 12-09-2012, 01:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fordzilla

I cracked the first one last night after about 2 1/2 weeks in bottles. It was delicious. Lots of vanilla flavor, more than I was expecting. Very tasty though.

The vanilla will subside if you age it longer. It really comes to after four weeks.

**tre9er** · 12-10-2012, 06:05 PM

I made the tea for 9g of this on Saturday. I used two whole vanilla beans, sliced and scraped and I still hardly tasted the vanilla. I didn't get a cinnamon stick, so I used about 1/2tbsp of ground cinnamon, 1tbsp ground ginger. I used a syringe to put 1ML in 2oz of beer, then 2ML was where I started tasting it. That meant that all of the tea went in. Still didn't taste much vanilla, but it's not carbed and I know that changes things a lot, from experience.

I also used WLP500 which has a big clove note to it, so it may be overpowering at this point. Anyways, kegged to two-5g cornies and it's on gas right now. Wanting to bottle off a 12-pack in 10 days and take with me on Christmas drive to Georgia for relatives. Probably won't be great quite yet by Christmas (15 days since spicing) but I can recommend they save most of the bottles until January.

**shoshin** · 12-10-2012, 08:37 PM

I recently used wlp530, which didn't give much clove or spice, but did impart lots of fruity esters.

**petercarrjones** · 12-11-2012, 01:57 PM

My 2012 version was a split batch of sorts. We mashed with some roasted acorn squash, we then fermented half inside a pumpkin(!) and half in glass- both used Belgian Leuven Yeast (WY3538). The pumpkin half became our fall pumpkin beer, which we bottled half with spices, half without. The clean side became our christmas beer which we bottled with the traditional spice tea. In all the version, I'd say the pumpkin fermented/unspiced was my favorite. Pumpkin with spices was pretty decent. The Christmas version was not improved by the squash, though I can't tell if the Belgian yeast helped or hindered. The mix of spice and sweet notes from the squash was just a bit too cloying. The lesson is don't fit all the flavor profiles of your fall seasonals into one batch.

zeprock2 · 12-11-2012, 05:11 PM

Is one pack of Safale-05 enough for a 5 gal batch or are you guys using two? mr malty says 1.3 packs but i dont want to waste a second pack if its not needed.

DagoBrewer · 12-12-2012, 02:08 PM

Just cracked one of these last night! It has changed so much since i last tried one a little over a week ago!! The ginger is finally at the back end and the vanilla and cinnamon are up front followed by nice hops flavor with sweet almost chewy malt flavors!! My good friend who is a beer and wine critic was over and we compared this with a couple other holiday ales and he says mine was "by far the best Christmas brew he has ever tasted" Awesome recipe, thanks!!

**tre9er** · 12-12-2012, 07:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zeprock2

Is one pack of Safale-05 enough for a 5 gal batch or are you guys using two? mr malty says 1.3 packs but i dont want to waste a second pack if its not needed.

Make a small starter. Sanitize a jar, boil some water and DME, cool, add to jar with yeast, cover in sanitized foil, shake from time to time. Counts will multiply enough to only need one pack.