Day after Christmas Eve old ale

Grain Bill

Type Color Potential Amount

Pale Ale malt 3L 1.038 4.5lbs
Munich Malt 6L 1.037 4.5lbs
Amber Malt 20L 1.037 3.0lbs
Special B 147L 1.030 1.0lbs
Carafa I 320L 1.032 0.25lbs
Light DME 4L 1.043 5lbs

I did a standard infusion mash at 154deg for 1 hour. I had 4 gallons of strike water and 4 gallons of sparge for a total volume of about 7 gallons going into the brewpot after the grain soaked up a gallon.

Hops

Type Amount Time Alpha

Liberty pellet 1oz 60min 4.5%
Fuggle whole 1oz 60min 4.75%
Liberty pellet 0.5oz 30min 4.5%
Fuggle whole 0.5oz 30min 4.75
Libert pellet 0.5oz 15min 4.5%
Fuggle whole 0.5oz 15min 4.75

Additional ingredients to add at flame out: 1g nutmeg, 1g allspice, 8g ground cinnamon, 4g powdered ginger, 4g of vanilla extract.

Schedule

Pitch yeast at 75F and ferment for 3 weeks. Afterward, obtain 3lbs of dried fruit that you like. I chose 1lb of plums, 1lb of apricots, 1lb of raisins. Put fruit in a bowl and add enough boiling water to cover. Let rehydrate for 1 to 2 hours. Then chill to 70-75 degrees. Transfer fruit with sweet liquid into secondary vessel. Rack beer from primary on top of fruit. Let age for 2 months. Prime with 1/2 cup priming sugar and then bottle. Let carbonate for another 2 months. Enjoy.

UPDATE:

Due to the fact that it may be difficult to clean a glass carboy after having the beer sit on fruit for a couple of months, I recommend this following change to the beer. I recommend three weeks in the primary fermentation, but with a proper yeast starter and fermentation conditions, the bulk of the fermentation will be done in the first week. At this point, you can open your fermentor (I used a plastic bucket) and dump in the fruit. Subsequently, the fermentation should pick up and continue for a few more days. This is a good way to get more out of the yeast in case you get a stuck fermentation. The simple sugars from fruit are easily processed by the yeast and they may finish off any maltose left from the grains and extract. This way, after two more weeks, you can rack off the fruit into a carboy and let age for a good 2 months. Afterwards, you shouldn't have more than just regular sediment in your secondary as opposed to fruit which may be difficult to clean.

Have you brewed this up before? How did it turn out? I've been thinking about doing my first "Holiday Ale" this year and this looks like a nice recipie to try.

It's actually in the secondary fermentor right now. I will bottle it in September and crack one open on Christmas. So unfortunately, I don't have any notes on the flavors. But it's based off of a recipe from a book which I've tried several recipes from, and they all turned out really good. The only major difference between my recipe and the one from the book is that I added DME to kick the alcohol in the 9-10% range. My only piece of advice I can give you if you want to try this recipe is to start now. This beer takes a long time to mature. It's an old ale so the extra aging is crucial to give it some sherry like oxydation notes. The other thing is get a steam cleaner. Once you start fermenting this beer, it will blow up in your face. Mine exploded after 24 hours. When I woke the next morning, there was beer everywhere. I tried cleaning up the airlock and sealing it back up, but as soon as I did that, the airlock would immediately clog up from them foam, and the top would blow off. So I had to remove the airlock entirely and let it burp foam through the hole for a good 12 hours before it was calm enough to put it back on. Beyond that, the beer smelled really really good when I transferred to secondary so I'm sure it's gonna be a winner.

Hope this helps...

Phil

Thanks for the info. I'll just hook up a blow-off valve. I also find that when I brew really big beers with a chance of blow back that it helps to keep the fermentor in a large plastic tub like a rubbermaid container or a cement bucket. Haven't had to pull the steam cleaner out yet!

I've got my rig full at the moment with a nice Scotch Ale and a hefty Weizenbock. Once the hit the kegs I think I might try to sneak this in before the holidays. Thanks for the intriguing post.

I'll be brewing this up next weekend. Looks like it will only be in bottle for 4 weeks at xmas, unless I cut down on the 2 months on the fruit. Thanks for the recipe, should be fun to compare notes.

edit** When did you add the DME?

In answer to you're question, I added the DME at the beginning of the boil. I'm about a couple of weeks from bottling. It's just torturing me having to wait several more months before I can try it. But I'm sure it's going to turn out good. Also, I will probably get a packet of dry yeast to add to the secondary fermentor a day or two before I bottle. Considering the high level of alchohol of this beer and the long aging period, I'm affraid the beer wouldn't have enough yeast left to carbonate otherwise. I'll talk to my LHBS and see if he think's it's necessary.

Bottled this baby yesterday. It was the most scary bottling session I've ever gone through. I had the hardest time starting a siphon so I lost quite a bit of beer in the process. I realized my racking cane had a bunch a mini cracks along the entire length of it so I had to trash it. Then my tubing was too short to reach the bottom of my bottling vessel so the beer splashed like crazy in the transfer. But I finally got it bottled and boy is it gonna be worth in the end. This thing smelled so fruity with tons of phenolic character. It's gonna be a rich and complex beer by December worthy of a Christmas Ale.

So TheInfinitySaga and VTBrewer, how were your experiences with the fermentation? Was violent or calm?

stupid crazy violent

I'm thinking there has to be a better way to do this then have it blow every time. Next time, I will try something different. I will mash the grains and start fermenting that on its own. After the fermentation start showing signs that its slowing down, I will make DME addition directly in the fermentor 1lbs at a time every 2 days. In order to help sanitation, I will also boil the DME in a couple cups of water to make sure I'm not going to infect the rest of the beer. But anyhow, I'm sorry your experience with fermention wasn't pleasant.

I was fine with it. Just glad i was working from home that day to clean it up every couple of hours.

Did you rack off the fruit to another fermenter, then off that a day later to bottling bucket, or straight to bottling bucket? Add any yeast? If so how much?

I actually changed the recipe a bit. I added the fruit to the primary fermentor after main fermentation was done (about a week). It then bubbled a bit more to ferment the sugars from the fruit. After three weeks in primary, I racked off to secondary. But if you put the fruit in secondary, I would rack off to tertiary for a couple of days just to separate the fruit gunk from the beer. Also, I did add yeast in the bottling bucket. I just got a pack of S-04 dry yeast and sprinkled it in when I added the priming sugar. I then gently stirred it up without splashing to mix the yeast and sugar. The yeast didn't mix too well so you might try hydrating it in some warm water before adding it.

I'll give it a shot. I'm a little behind on this brew and just put it on the fruit. All the raisins and plus seem to have what looks like hop residue all over them. Or else its a nasty infection. I'm going to go with hops because I htink positive.

The fruit in mine was also on the nasty side. But this beer should be in the 9 to 10% ABV range. With so much alcohol, it's unlikely an infection could grow. And plus I tasted some of mine at bottling and detected no off flavors. I'm not too worried about it.

Good point. I'm 1.083 to 1.017 after 3 weeks in primary and on the fruit now. I used 3lbs DME because that's what I had. I think you used 4? Either way, tasted great when it went on fruit and yeah..nothing should grow in there. Thanks for recipe. I'm going to do about a Nov 1 bottle and XMas eve taste.

VTBrewer said:

I'm going to do about a Nov 1 bottle and XMas eve taste.

Click to expand...

Mine have been in the bottle for a couple of weeks now and it's demanding every inch of willpower not to peak and see how this beer will turn out. Christmas hold very little magic or surprises nowadays, so the wait for this beer to mature will be a bit of both for me. But let me know how it turns out on Nov. 1st

I'm going to brew another batch of this beer in January. Since I didn't have a big enough mash tun to handle this brew before, I did a partial mash and supplemented this with dry extract to boost the gravity to 10%. This second version will be all-grain. Here's The Day After Christmas Eve 2.0:

New grain bill:

8.50 lbs Munich Malt
8.50 lbs UK Pale Malt
3.00 lbs Amber Malt
1.00 lbs Special B
0.50 lbs Flaked Barley
0.25 lbs Carafa II

Mash at 154F for 1 hour.

I also thought it could use a slight boost in bitterness so I revised the hop schedule a bit.

Hops:

28.7 %AA Liberty [60 mins.]
27.6 %AA Fuggles [60 mins.]

Total IBUs: about 56

Other stuff:

0.25 tsp. Nutmeg [Flameout]
0.25 tsp. Allspice [Flameout]
2.00 tsp. Cinnamon [Flameout]
1.00 tsp. Powdered Ginger [Flameout]
1.00 tsp. Vanilla Extract [Flameout]

The following must be rehydrated for 1hr. with boiling water and added to primary fermentor as fermentation subsides.

1.00 lbs Dried Raisins
1.00 lbs Dried Plums
1.00 lbs Dried Apricots
2 Whole Cloves
Zest of 2 oranges.

After 6 months of waiting, we now have the 2009 edition of Day After Christmas Eve Old Ale. Merry Christmas everyone! Enjoy!



PS: Sorry about the lack of head. I think the high alcohol levels of this beer just killed it. I will be working on that for the 2010 edition.

Hi Mithion!
That beers looks really interesting to say the least. Can you give us a full description of the final product?
I'm developping a recipe that uses dried fruits and I wanted to know how these ingredients seemed to have influenced to flavor and aroma in your beer.
Cheers!

This beer turned out great. It obviously needs to sit a bit longer to mellow out, but the couple of samples I tried over the holidays, it's already quite drinkable. This particular recipe is quite heavy on the malt side. I'd say it's similar to a belgian quadrupel with a bit less belgian "funk" (probably due to the usage of wyeast 1728 as oppose to a belgian strand). The hops are barely noticeable, but I find I don't miss them in this type of beer. The base is quite fruity and has notes of burnt sugar laced with raisins and plums. I was suprised but all three fruits contributed to the flavors. The raisins and the plums dominate, but the appricot is still discernable. The alcohol is quite hot and its presence reminds me of mellow red wine. Warming but not sharp. Also, the spices come through and I was glad to learn I didn't overdo them. Overall, the beer is very complex and is hard to explain all the flavors. It is however, very appropriate as a spiced ale or strong winter warmer. At 6 months, the beer is drinkable, but isn't quite rounded. I can detect a faint flavor of burnt malt which sticks out and also a mild tartness I expect is coming from the fruit. Both of those are nice flavors, but they just haven't melded yet. I expect this beer to be spectacular next christmas when it will have been 18 months in the bottle.

To answer your specific about the dried fruit, my experience with them is limited to this particular beer. However, I'm really impressed by what they added to the beer. I didn't expect that they would contribute so much flavor and yet they did and I was thrilled. If you want a guesstimate of the amount of flavor, I would say that the quantity I added (that is 3 lbs) is just right for the Old Ale I brewed. The flavors are not overwhelming, but they are a bit more than a simple accent. If you want just a slight accent, I would halve the fruit to maybe 1.5 lbs. Of course, the strength of the beer also determines how the fruit is percieved. 3 lbs in a 6.5% winter warmer would probably be over the top. I wish browsers were equipped with smellovision and tastovision. I don't have the right words to describe how this beer tastes.

Yeah tastovision would be great!

Thank you for the description!
I ended up racking my hybrid barley wine onto some fresh apricot. I removed the pitts and peeled the fruits just like tomatoes(drop them in boiling water for 30-45 seconds and ''pull'' off the peel), I thought it would help sanitize them and minimize waste.

jeeeps said:

Yeah tastovision would be great!

Thank you for the description!
I ended up racking my hybrid barley wine onto some fresh apricot. I removed the pitts and peeled the fruits just like tomatoes(drop them in boiling water for 30-45 seconds and ''pull'' off the peel), I thought it would help sanitize them and minimize waste.

Click to expand...

Oh wow. You now have the extremely important responsibility of reporting your results with using fresh apricots.

Sounds really tasty. In 6 months, you'll have amazing beer.

jeeeps said:

Yeah tastovision would be great!

Thank you for the description!
I ended up racking my hybrid barley wine onto some fresh apricot. I removed the pitts and peeled the fruits just like tomatoes(drop them in boiling water for 30-45 seconds and ''pull'' off the peel), I thought it would help sanitize them and minimize waste.

Click to expand...

How'd this method turn out?

I haven't tried that beer yet, but at bottling everything seemed normal.

I still have a few bottles of this stuff left over. They're about 2 years old now. The beer hasn't changed much in the last year or so except the carbonation is almost completely gone. Head retention is also terrible/non-existent at this point but that's probably normal for the age. This beer drinks more like a glass of red wine than it does as a mug of beer. I want to brew the all-grain version I posted earlier but haven't had the chance since it's a bit of an expensive recipe.

Looks interesting, might have to do this one for next winter.

I've got 4 or 5 bottles left of this stuff. It's been 2 and half years since I brewed this and it's now fully matured. Probably one of my finest beers I've ever made. The original recipe I based this on was for a 7.5% beer. I'm really glad I bumped it up to 10%+ as the alcohol bite is much better at balancing the fruitiness of the beer. Let me know how it turns out.

I'll be brewing this up after Christmas to be consumed and given as gifts next year. Seems to me, this could pretty easily be turned into a partigyle... anyone tried it, or have any thoughts?

I was thinking the second runnings could just make a simple pale ale or something.

I plan on brewing this next Monday, any thoughts on partigyling this bad boy?