Brewing standard 5 gallon recipe as 3 gallons

Does anyone see any issues with brewing the recipe here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f76/great-lakes-christmas-ale-clone-218147/

in a lower volume? I don't want to brew 5 gallons of this beer sadly. What I'm wonder is this: If I brew it as a 3 gallon batch instead, will the higher gravity and spices be too much? If I need to scale it I will, but I wouldn't mind this being a big, alcoholic beer for Christmas. I feel like it would fit. I posted this same question in the actual recipe thread, but since the thread is quite a few months old I was afraid I'd get no responses.

Thanks all!

You are making this as an all-grain?

Sorry, no. I am doing the extract with specialty grains version a bit further down the page. My bad.

I'm confused, are you talking about reducing the volume of the liquid and keeping the ingredients the same, or simply brewing a smaller batch of this recipe? Yes if you reduce the amount of water, you will make a higher gravity beer. Will it taste bad or good, it's hard to say, recipes are often about balance.

If you're saying you want a smaller batch of THIS beer, then you just scale the recipe. I tend to do a lot of 2.5 gallon batches of beer, either scaling them down from 5 gallons, or creating a 2.5 gallon test batch, and doubling everything up for a 5 gallon batch.

ingedient amount divided by 5, quotient multiplied by 3

No, my intent was to keep the ingredients the same, and simply draw down the liquid volume. I'm just worried it might be too much of a punch when it comes down to it. I guess the only thing to do is try!

I am going to go ahead and make this beer in a smaller volume. I'll let everyone know how it turns out. The last beer I did this with was a pumpkin ale and it worked out pretty well. Just needed more time in the bottle.

That's going to make a huge beer that the yeast might not be able to handle. You may want to rethink it before putting time and money into it.

This beer is already at 1.075 OG. After taking out water you will bump it to around 1.136, if i did my numbers right. You're taking a fairly big beer and making it a REALLY big beer. The alcohol content will likely get high enough that you could need champagne yeast or another non beer yeast to get this attenuated.

Could make for a fun Christmas though

Ok. That scares me, so maybe I'll make a 4 gallon batch? Don't want to kill my family at Christmas.

It's a big beer just multiple all the ingredients by .6 because you are brewing a 60% batch. Use the same amount of yeast. I do a lot of smaller batches, it works. If your family is not used to homebrews, the normal recipe is going knock their socks off, beefing it up may have them putting each other in head locks telling them how much they love them.

I already bought all the ingredients, so I guess I will just make a 5 gallon batch! I love Christmas ales anyway so the more...the merrier? The original thread is recommending about 3 weeks in primary and another few weeks in secondary and then about 2-3 months bottled, so I will have this ready at the perfect time it seems.