Winter Seasonal Beer Christmas Ale

I'm gonna brew a modified version of this tomorrow. I'm dropping the spices, subbing the honey/molasses for D90 Candi Syrup, and using Magnum for both the 60 and 20 min additions. I also plan to pitch WLP550.

Pretty excited to try it out, omitting the spices since it won't have as much time as you mentioned above to mellow out before the holidays.

I just got my latest batch into the fermenter last week...

The honey doesn't add much flavor... Just dries it out a bit and ups the abv... The molasses does contribute some flavor but I'm not sure I could pick it out...

The candy syrup is probably a fine substitute...

The spices are what make it Christmas-y in my opinion...

It's not bad when conditioned less than a month... Just that it gets better with age... I'd still go with *some* spices if I were you... Maybe the orange zest & fresh ginger at flameout, then make a vodka tincture with cinnamon, vanilla bean, and allspice that you can add at bottling?

I started mine late last year and had to tell my giftees not to open them for a couple weeks

This year I started earlier...