Fall/Winter Beer Ideas???

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Jonesy1979

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The crisp wonderful fall weather is upon us here. Who is brewing what for the colder weather? I'm considering a pumpkin spice ale. Any other ideas?
 
Yes, pumpkin, stout, porter, a darker lager, ie. OktoberFAST (have one on tap now I brewed end of August), I'm planning on doing a banana beer, ie. banana bread or the Bananas foster beer. Usually more rich, hearty, higher ABV beers to warm you up on a cold evening.
 
Ambers, Coppers, Stouts, Porters, Holidays are all great for the fall/winter season and a good IPA is a nice thing to have as well!
 
Fall and winter calls for brown ales and my annual batch of milk stout.
 
I'm brewing a chocolate stout than racking over some tart cherries, and since I'll have a fresh yeast cake I'll be trying my hand at utilizing that for an RIS i think.
 
Recipe: Smoked Maple Brown Ale
Brewer: Corey Shoemaker
Asst Brewer:
Style: American Brown Ale
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (30.0)

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 6.70 gal
Post Boil Volume: 5.20 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.00 gal
Bottling Volume: 4.50 gal
Estimated OG: 1.072 SG
Estimated Color: 30.5 SRM
Estimated IBU: 22.5 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 72.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 72.0 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
7 lbs 12.0 oz Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 1 56.9 %
1 lbs 4.0 oz Brown Malt (65.0 SRM) Grain 2 9.2 %
10.0 oz Caramel Malt - 90L 6-Row (Briess) (90.0 Grain 3 4.6 %
6.0 oz Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 4 2.8 %
2.0 oz Smoked Malt (9.0 SRM) Grain 5 0.9 %
3 lbs 8.0 oz Maple Syrup (35.0 SRM) Sugar 6 25.7 %
0.80 oz Styrian Goldings [5.00 %] - Boil 75.0 mi Hop 7 15.3 IBUs
1.00 oz Hallertauer [4.00 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 8 7.2 IBUs
1.0 pkg European Ale Yeast (Wyeast Labs #1338) [ Yeast 9 -


Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Light Body, No Mash Out
Total Grain Weight: 13 lbs 10.0 oz
----------------------------
Name Description Step Temperat Step Time
Mash In Add 14.66 qt of water at 163.7 F 150.0 F 75 min

Sparge: Fly sparge with 4.75 gal water at 168.0 F
Notes:
------
• 1/4 cup brown sugar for priming
• 1/2 cup maple syrup for priming
• 1/8 cup corn sugar for priming

Heat 2.5 gal. water to 164° F. Crack and mix in pale, brown, crystal, chocolate, and smoked malts. Hold at 152° F for 90 min. Sparge with 2.5 gal. water at 168° F.

Add to kettle the dry malt and the maple syrup. Total boil is 75 min. Bring to a boil, add the Styrian Goldings hops, boil 60 min. Add Hallertauer hops, boil 15 minutes. Remove from heat, pour into fermenter and top up to 5.25 gal. with chilled pre-boiled water. Cool to 68° F, pitch yeast.

Ferment at 65°F for three weeks, then rack to your secondary. Age cool (50° F) for four weeks. Prime with the brown sugar, maple syrup, and corn sugar. Bottle and age three to five weeks.

OG = 1.065 FG = 1015 Bitterness = 22 IBUs


Created with BeerSmith 2 - http://www.beersmith.com
 
I just put a butternut squash stout in primary, with caraffa I instead of chocolate and medium home-toasted instead of roasted, to make it milder for a stout.
 
I'm doing a Mulled Wine Porter. Ya know, mulling spices in the brew aged on some red wined oak. Delicious.
 
Once my pale ale is out of the primary im brewing a Thanksgiving amber, then going to a banana
 
I'm going bold this Friday and attempting an Eggnog Stout (no eggs or cream, just the nog) since I just saw the first half gallons hit the shelves at the grocery store. Should be interesting.
 
It's Lager time. Just finishing a Ceske Budvar. Next in line is a California Common with apple flavoring. Then a Munich Helles. Then a Chocolate Ale, then who knows...
 
My Christmas beer is a Xingu clone. One of my favorite beers suggested to me by my boss. Hope it ends up anything close to the original!
 
Hmm, I've got peach wine, apple jack, some really bad ginger ale, hard apple cider, coffee wine, black cherry wine, peach wine with tea, hard limeade, and hard limeade with tea. I've also got some grapefruit wine, and some mead going.

Hmm, I think I'll make some beer for a change.
 
I've got a new (to me) Oktoberfest fermenting at the moment. It's got honey and pumpkin pie spice. Should be interesting. The wort looked like it was ready to drink.

The recipe:
4.0 lbs pale malt
3.5 lbs amber malt
40 L Crystal Malt
1 cup Clover Honey
3 oz. Hallertauer hops
1.5 Oz Cascade Hops
2 tsp. Pumpkin Pie Spice (I used nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, allspice and cloves)
American Yeast

The boil procedure is mainly the same, but you start by adding only 2 oz. of the Hallertauer hops and .5 oz of the cascade hops. Add the pumpkin pie spice after the wort's been boiling for 35 minutes. Let that boil for 5 minutes and add another ounce of Cascade hops and .5 oz. of Hallertauer hops. Also, you want to put in the honey and Irish moss, if you use it.

Edit: I only used 1 cup of honey. Apparently, I liked pounds when writing this.
 
I think I overdid it on the high ABV brews. All BIAB and in various stages of fermentation / aging / lagering).

Trippel (attempted clone of New Belgium's, kegging next weekend)
Bock
Christmas Ale (combo of NB's Brickwarmer recipe, my own spice blend and 2# of corn sugar thrown in for good measure)
DoppelBock (first attempt at harvesting yeast from the Bock)
 
I've got four going right now. a oaked pumpkin spice amber ale that should be ready by thanksgiving. I have a spiced rum porter and a bourbon barrel porter (same base wort but I split it into two different secondaries) and a Hatch chile-chocolate stout
 
got an extract chocolate oatmeal stout (2.5g) and a partial mash mild (5g) going right now

up next is a partial mash munich helles (3g) with honey malt as the toasted malt. ive read its pretty similar to brumalt and i have it.

working on a recipe for a strong whiskey oaked red irish ale and a dry irish stout.

and my brain i will admit is already thinking about spring time stuff.
 
Currently I have a pumpkin ale in secondary and getting ready to bottle. I have a Trappist Style Chimay Blueish fermenting out and will have that bottled by The beginning of November (just in time for December). I have a hefeweizen for the warmer days (like today) and when I need a quick house brew.

Thanks for the suggestions; I think I'm going to try an amber, black IIPA, and/or a stout of some kind.
 
5 gallon Black IPA boiled with dark chocolate and french pressed through Kenyan AA coffee, then dry hopped in secondary with 6 oz of Kenyan AA whole beans. Primed with Molasses. Grains were de-bittered Belgian Black, UK Chocolate Malt, Dark DME and Amber Extract. (redonkulous hop load including US Magnum, Sorachi, Cascade and whole cone cascade.) This could be interesting. It's in bottles and should be ready by Halloween. Code Name: Sexual Chocolate.

1 gallon Double Chocolate Oatmeal Coffee Stout made with leftover Chocolate Malts from above, rice and oatmeal to finish the grain bill, coffee pressed and then floated with Kenyan AA when it went to secondary.) This left a LOT of trub and I re-filtered it after racking to secondary. Only finished with about 3/4 gallon. Bottled it with Molasses too. Should also be ready by Halloween. Code Name: Sloppy Seconds.

1 gallon OMGale. Sadly, I did not mean to use net-speak as a name, but when I shortened Orange, Mint, Golden Ale on the bottle cap...this is what I got. Light Golden Ale made from a partial grain kit with orange zest for seasoning, I added young, whole mint leaves from the garden to the wort through a hop-back jury rig. Then, after racking to secondary (yes...even in a 1 gal bottle) floated fresh organic orange zest (peels with a carrot scraper, folks) and whole mint leaves for a few days. Finished with local made, disolved granular sugar. Bottled and ready next week. Code Name: OMGale

Plans for tonight (feedback appreciated) a Thanksgiving Wheat code-named 'Bacchanalia Cornucopia' that is looking a little something like this: Starts with a 5 gal Summer Wheat Recipe from Brooklyn Brew Shop's 52 Seasonal Beers (I recommend it by the way.) then peels off part of the grain bill and adds in the "harvest" ingredients, then some subtle spice.

60 min mash at 152-154
2.5 Gallons Water + 5 gallons for sparging. (thinking of pouring first wort back through once here to bump things a bit.)
5 lbs Pale Ale Malt
3.5 lbs Pale Wheat Malt
1 lb Munich Malt (mainly for color.)
(question for tonight is really here: what % of above grains should I pull when adding the following.)
Roasted Sweet potato shavings (no skins to avoid tannins, 375 degrees for 1 hour sprinkled with Cinnamon.) about 1 lb
Roasted Pumpkin, fresh from the gord then roasted as above with cinnamon. about 1-2 lbs
Wild Rice -- 1 cup cooked.
Craisins! (nice subtle cranberry flavor minus fruit issues with wild/unknown yeast.) 1lb mash, 1lb secondary float.

Spice:
Cinnamon sticks at 60 mins (2 small, going easy here) plus one for the secondary "dry hop" float.
Vanilla (one whole dry stick...yep, stick.) at 60 mins.
Cloves at 5-10 mins (about 5 whole cloves)
Mix of nutmeg & all spice (about 1 tbs) at 5 mins (edit: 1/2 tbs each)

Dry hop in secondary with about a quarter to half ounce Cascade whole hops and 1 lb craisins.

Bottle with molasses or dark corn syrup.

Going to plug all this into BeerSmith 2.0, but I don't think it will help with wild rice, sweet potato and pumpkin.

Edit: Homebrew Society friend of mine said that leaving a lot of grain in is a good idea to create the enzymes that will help eat up the starchy nature of the potato and pumpkin. Agreement from the forums?
 
Edit: Homebrew Society friend of mine said that leaving a lot of grain in is a good idea to create the enzymes that will help eat up the starchy nature of the potato and pumpkin. Agreement from the forums?

I did a bit of research on this. It appears that you can also add in enzyme powders to the wort (along with your yeast) to turn the starch into sugar. I was not able to find any information on whether the grains would create this enzyme, however, that does not mean your friend is wrong.
 
Well, for the winter - I have just finished my first Christmas beer. A small adaptation as this one is a lighter color (SRM), but still nice and strong.

Also, I think one of the most beers for the season is an Oatmeal Stout. All that thickness and roastiness and velevet taste is essential when it gets cold.
 
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