Christmas Truce - Scottish Christmas Ale

This is the second time I've made this recipe. The first time it turned out wonderfully, awesome brown colour, decent tan head, good malty flavour with spice as a pleasant aftertaste, with the dates as a mellow background flavour.

This batch, some issues happened during the brew that are causing me to wonder how this batch is going to turn out.....

First the recipe:

Christmas Truce
23l/ 5 imp gal/ 6 US gal
OG 1.074
FG 1.015
ABV = 7.85%

4.5 kg Golden Promise pale malt
.45 kg Carafoam
.45 kg Cara/Crystal 60L
.45 kg Honey Malt
.1 kg Toasted Barley
.35 kg Molasses
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp allspice
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cloves
1 cup chopped dates
28g Northern Brewer
28g Williamette

1 packet Lallamand Nottingham Ale Yeast

Malt at 65 C for an hour with 27l of water. Sparge with 7l of 65 C water for approx 28l of wort.

Boil for 60 minutes with the following schedule:

Add the molasses and Northern Brewer hops at 60 min
Add the ginger at 12 minutes
Add the allspice, cinnamon, cloves and Williamette at 10 minutes.

Cool and pitch the yeast.

Rack to the secondary at one week over the chopped dates. Ferment for another 7 to 10 days until you reach FG. Bottle with 1/2 tsp of dextrose/ litre of liquid. Bottle condition for at least a month.

This particular batch though did not go as planned.

My malt tun is a 48l cooler with a bung to hold the valve. The valve got knocked open when my son tripped over it and in my haste to close the valve the bung got pushed in and the whole bung came out causing the loss of a lot of wort. I got another bung to hold in the wort and let the mash continue. I sparged as normal. Getting the wort into the pot resulted in a lot of grains in the wort. It was full of protein and grains, but ended with only 15l of 1.046 wort in the primary. I've racked to the secondary now, but I've ended up with about 3l of trub.

Any ideas if this is going to work, or if this is going to end up a "learning experience."

Is your beer named after the WWI story? We just passed the 100th anniversary of it. Nice name!

I used dates in a belgian dubbel. Never though about it in a holiday beer, but it's a great idea. Thanks.

BorderReiver said:

This particular batch though did not go as planned.

My malt tun is a 48l cooler with a bung to hold the valve. The valve got knocked open when my son tripped over it and in my haste to close the valve the bung got pushed in and the whole bung came out causing the loss of a lot of wort. I got another bung to hold in the wort and let the mash continue. I sparged as normal. Getting the wort into the pot resulted in a lot of grains in the wort. It was full of protein and grains, but ended with only 15l of 1.046 wort in the primary. I've racked to the secondary now, but I've ended up with about 3l of trub.

Any ideas if this is going to work, or if this is going to end up a "learning experience."

Click to expand...

You're in the recipe database. This is probably the wrong place to have this kind of convo.

passedpawn said:

Is your beer named after the WWI story? We just passed the 100th anniversary of it. Nice name!

I used dates in a belgian dubbel. Never though about it in a holiday beer, but it's a great idea. Thanks.

Click to expand...

Yes, it is. As a member, I've been giving my beers military related names and somehow that seemed appropriate for Christmas beer.

I got the idea for using dates from a bottle of "Mates With Dates" from Beau's Brewery, and the dates that we used to get in Christmas fruit cakes.