whats in the pipeline for Christmas/seasonal brew?

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DagoBrewer

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I have a tasty chocolate raspberry stout and a beautiful spiced Christmas ale in the closet just waiting for December!!
 
I've got my first Russian imperial stout (first imperial anything actually) in primary right now. I'm planning on adding a tincture of 2 scraped and chopped whole vanilla beans, a stick of Ceylon cinnamon, and 2 oz of Makers Mark to the secondary in two weeks. I wanna give a bunch away to family and close friends for Christmas, and sit on some for a year. I'm gonna hold off on having any until Christmas myself as well. I had an OG of 1.102 and 5 month old yeast (yikes), but she fermented down to 1.025 in a week! Needless to say this is the most excited I'm going to be for Christmas in a LONG time! :mug:
 
The PM pale ale I started last night will be ready for turkey day. I'm thinking a red or brown ale for Christmas starting 1st of next month so it'll just be ready & fresh by then.
 
I have a Christmas Ale due for bottling this coming weekend and then shortly thereafter I will be doing a nice Oatmeal Stout. Both should be on track for the holiday week off.
 
Im gonna brew a blackberry porter for winter time and my red session ale this weekend! This should be a fun saturday!!
 
I never would have thought to put cinnamon in an IPA. Have you tasted any of it yet? Cuz I'm having a hard time picturing what it would taste like since cinnamon and hops are fairly forward flavors.
 
Reno_eNVy's punkin ale and the Bananas Foster Ale, along with about two cases of Oktoberfest that just need chilling.
 
Christmas ale has been in the bottles since July, Barleywine has been in the bottles since august, RIS is slated to be bottled in a week. Also planning a foreign export stout and a robust porter. I like burly beers.
 
Didn't really plan it this way, but I've been brewing malt-heavy beers that will be appropriate for cold weather. My ESB is just about ready (albeit underprimed---maybe to style as I intended, if that style is just enough carbonation to make a faint white swirl on the top of the beer and give a tingly sensation on your tongue if you pay close attention... but the flavor is awesome).

Have what was supposed to be a 1.064ish malt bomb fermenting now, but it may turn out to be a 1.054. Haven't quite figured out what the SG was (I measured 1.053, but based on the boil gravity and DME addition, it should have been higher, so I suspect I didn't get it mixed well enough, although it may simply be failure to account for trub and a bit of over-dilution).

In any case, I'm not a fan of super high gravity beers, and I don't think I'm going to out-do Sam Adams Winter Lager if I want a "winter" themed beer, so I'll stick to fairly strong malty stuff.
 
I never would have thought to put cinnamon in an IPA. Have you tasted any of it yet? Cuz I'm having a hard time picturing what it would taste like since cinnamon and hops are fairly forward flavors.

Just a small amount. Hoping it shows up on the back end after a while. We will see
 
I have been pondering adding some cinnamon and nutmeg to the upcoming brown ale to give it a christmas tone. Anyone add that to a brown?
 
ktraver97ss said:
I have been pondering adding some cinnamon and nutmeg to the upcoming brown ale to give it a christmas tone. Anyone add that to a brown?

I havnt, but that sounds pretty cool!
 
Calichusetts said:
Just a small amount. Hoping it shows up on the back end after a while. We will see

Cool man. I'm interested as to how that ends up tasting. Let us know!

I would say cinnamon and nutmeg in a brown/porter/stout would be great as long as its not too strong. Maybe a touch of anise as well.
 
This was my first year brewing "holiday" beers.

I have a "Christmas in Belgium" aging in a corny. It has orange peel, cinnamon, cloves, and belgian yeast.

There is a "Spiced Imperial Porter" that is about to go on some oak. This one was heavy on the cloves and alspice.

Last but not least is the "Pumpkin Chai Porter" with 8lb of sugar pumpkins and 4 oz of organic chai tea.


Cant wait to crack some of these open!
 
Now: pumpkin Spice Porter & Black Winter Saison
Aging: Pumpkin Fest Ale, Saffron Tripel & American Barleywine
On brew deck: French Oaked Old Ale, SN Celebration clone, Chocolate Coffee Sweet Stout
 
A strong old ale (unspiced, of course), around 1.092 OG. I plan on opening a single bomber on Christmas Eve and another on New Year's Eve this year to share with friends and family, leaving the rest to age for the next few years. I even have plans to move the beer two hours away from home to age in a root cellar to guard me from the temptation of opening bottles ;)

I snuck a taste when checking for gravity after a few days (the beer was at 1.054, most of my beers START sub 1.045...), the beer tasted really good: marmelade, red fruits, molasses cookies and butterscotch. I know the butterscotch will fade strongly over time because of diacetyl reabsorption, but I hope some of it stays put in the bottles... it fits these kinds of beers well I think.
 
Thats awesome!! but how do you let it age for a few years? I brewed a barleywine about 1 1/2 years ago and it was spoiled after a year. It was great for 6 months, then i let it sit for 6 more and it was foul, stinky and plain nasty...
 
Thats awesome!! but how do you let it age for a few years? I brewed a barleywine about 1 1/2 years ago and it was spoiled after a year. It was great for 6 months, then i let it sit for 6 more and it was foul, stinky and plain nasty...

Sanitation. Sanitation. Sanitation.
 
Thinking about an Oatmeal Stout (primed with maple syrup). Then a Westvleteren clone. And then another batch of Oktoberfest. Maybe two batches - I love that stuff.
 
TromboneGuy said:
Thinking about an Oatmeal Stout (primed with maple syrup). Then a Westvleteren clone. And then another batch of Oktoberfest. Maybe two batches - I love that stuff.

I did a stout with syrup last year cuz at bottling time i found that i had NO corn sugar!! I saw a bottle of syrup and said, "thats got sugar in it."
I called it the breakfast stout. Tasted like buttery chocolate chip pancakes!!
 
I usually just do one "gift" beer per year (last year was an awesome Belgian Stout), but this year I made 2 different beers (forgot about one and thought 'oh! I need a christmas beer!) and happened to have an epic melomel going. I think everyone's getting a sampler pack (with a few regular beers) with some Golden Barleywine and Tripel, and my very very bestest friends will get two small bottles (probably 375s, maybe just quarter bottle splits) of my 21+% melomel. Nothing explicitly "Christmas" in style as I don't dig spice in beers, but definitely warming beers great around the holidays.
 
I've got an oatmeal stout that I just put into the fermentation chamber, and I'm prepping some oak cubes with bourbon, after a month on the bourbon I'm switching the cubes to maple syrup and then adding them to the stout.
 
Brown ale halfway done now, porter this weekend (with dates added), Irish Red two weeks later, Wee Heavy after that, then a Weizenbock (maybe Schmitz decoction-mashed, maybe with a pinch of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cardamom).
 
this years Chistmas party menu:

peppermint methaglin, born june 2011
sap wine (maple), born sept 2011
RIS, born feb 2012
pumpkin ale, born aug 2012
"40 ounce" ginger root stout, born june 2012
 
this years Chistmas party menu:

peppermint methaglin, born june 2011
sap wine (maple), born sept 2011
RIS, born feb 2012
pumpkin ale, born aug 2012
"40 ounce" ginger root stout, born june 2012

The fact that you state when your beers were "born" makes you one of the coolest brewers ever...fantastic menu...whats the maple sap wine like? We got a brewer up in Vermont who has won numerous awards for his maple beer...almost no water, just maple over a very long boil. Its released in such small amounts that there is virtually no distribution of it. He ages it in maple liquor barrells...here is a link:

http://www.lawsonsfinest.com/
 
brewing this weekend: herfstbok (dark malty-sweet dutch double bock)
in fermenter: pasilla & mora chili smoked porter
kegged: dubbel
on tap: obsidian stout clone (cybi)

almost ready for winter
 
Bottled my wet hopped (100% homegrown Cascades) harvest ale last week, should be ready for Halloween thru Thanksgiving.

Have an oaked, bourbon stout brewed in May that should be ready sometime in December.

My Christmas beer this year is an American Imperial Stout recipe that I fermented with Duvel's Belgian Strong yeast, racked on top of sweet cherries & cacao nibs for 3 weeks.

And I still have a few bottles of 2009, 2010, and 2011 Christmas beer that I can crack open.

So my pipeline is solid.
 
Oh yeah, I also have 4 bottles of FFF Baller Stout left and open one every Christmas with my brew crew. The last year one was phenominal, cant wait to try it after almost 2 years this xmas.
 
vanilla bourbon imperial porter, mint chocolate stout, black rye saison. should be a fun lineup.
 
I've got nothing going for the Christmas season right now. I dropped the ball and brewed my Halloween beer late so that one's not going to be conditioned until some time next month. I'm thinking of brewing a giant RIS on 12-21-12 and calling it something "Apocalyptic" themed, though. Might bang out a quick spiced porter for the holidays if I can get off my ass.
 
ktblunden said:
I've got nothing going for the Christmas season right now. I dropped the ball and brewed my Halloween beer late so that one's not going to be conditioned until some time next month. I'm thinking of brewing a giant RIS on 12-21-12 and calling it something "Apocalyptic" themed, though. Might bang out a quick spiced porter for the holidays if I can get off my ass.

I was thinking about brewing something stupid on 12-21 too just so i can NOT share it with my friends who think we wont wake up on 12-22 hahahahahaha!!
 
Not the biggest fan of "holiday beer" but I did add some cinnamon to my last IPA I brewed Monday

that cracked me up for some reason. it made me think to make an IPA german and suitable for oktoberfest to just add an um laude (sp) over the a. or for cinco de mayo just put one a ~ over the n and call it mexican. don't know why but just throwing cinnamon in an IPA made me chuckle.:D

OT: i have BM's black pearl porter ready to be bottled, an amber ale that has been in bottles a while, but probably won't make it past turkey day, and am now planning my next brew.

thinking more about thanksgiving brews as of now compared to christmas beers. i'm not into pumpkin beers or really any beer with much spice in them, so it is a little bit limiting to what most people consider "seasonal" beers.
 
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