Holiday Ale Recipe Help

Here is my recipe that I will be brewing today or tomorrow:

6.6 lbs. Munton liquid light malt extract
1 lb. Briess dry light malt extract
1 lb. Corn Sugar (added into wort)
12 oz. caramel 80L
4 oz. chocolate
4 oz. black patent
1 oz. Brewers Gold (60 min)
1 oz. Willamette (20 min)

Using cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, bitter orange peel, coriander, and a little allspice at flameout.

The yeast I'm using is Nottingham's dry yeast.

Would I be better off skipping the corn sugar and put 1-2 lbs. honey into the boil instead?

I'm going to skip secondary- is 4 weeks in primary long enough to condition before I bottle/keg?

For a winter beer, I certainly wouldn't add 1lb of corn sugar. That will dry it out like nobody's business, and usually holiday ales are thicker and sweet. If you add 1lb of honey right at flame-out it will retain some honey characters, but will dry out the beer still. If you go with that, try bumping the caramel malt up to 1-1.5lbs to give it a fuller character.

When I put that into Beersmith I got an OG of 1.068, so 4 weeks could do it, but it won't hurt to go longer since it's a slightly bigger beer.

Other than the corn sugar, it looks like a good recipe! What amounts are you going for with the spices?

For the spices I am using:

1/2 oz. bitter orange
tsp coriander
tsp cinnamon powder
tsp nutmeg powder
tsp ginger powder
1/4 tsp allspice

I'm sure this won't matter in the end but I did add 1 oz. dried ginger root, tsp cinnamon, and tsp of nutmeg into the boil for 60 min.

I'll go with the honey route and try to up the caramel grains to balance any dryness the honey will create.

I think you'll be fine with the Honey instead. I did a brew similar to this and it didn't dry out too much IMO.

I used
6# light LME
1# light DME
8 oz Crystal 60L
2 oz Black Patent
1# Clover Honey

Then the spice mix

It was one of the best spiced brews I had. I think you'll be more than fine.

todd49401 said:

I'm sure this won't matter in the end but I did add 1 oz. dried ginger root, tsp cinnamon, and tsp of nutmeg into the boil for 60 min.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I've always heard of spices added near the end of the boil. But I'm not sure how much of a difference it would make.

Let us know how it turns out!

Don't boil the cinnamon at least, you'll extract a good bit of tannin.

I added 2 lbs. of honey instead and got a FG of 1.074. I plan on brewing another Holiday/Winter Warmer so if I don't like this one or it's too dry then I'll give it out as a Christmas present.

I remember reading an article for brewing a pumpkin ale that a professional brewer would add the spices at different times just like hops.

Here is the paragraph that I am referring to:

" Scott also helped us better understand spicing during brewing. Initially, I was of the impression that the spices should go in last in order to infuse the maximum amount of aroma without boiling it away. Little did I realize that the procedure for adding certain spices is very similar to that followed when adding hops. Scott told us that it is indeed possible to obtain some desirable bitterness from cinnamon thus making it worthwhile to add at the beginning of the boil. He informed us that it is also possible to extract desirable flavors and aromas from the cinnamon and nutmeg by following the same timelines as that followed when adding hops. "


Here is the link to the full article if interested:

http://www.audioholics.com/news/edi...e-brew-recipe-and-commercial-microbrew-recipe

Hope this helps a little.