Holiday Ale questions

Well, I am pretty happy with my girlfriend and my first try at brewing. Not perfect, but a lot better than I expected. So we schlepped down to the home brew supply today to pick up another kit for another brew and settled on a "holiday ale" from the Brewer's Best Series.

The problem is, the instructions are exactly the same as our last brew which was an IPA, even though there are a lot more ingredients. We're trying to figure out at what point to add the extra ingredients.

Here is the ingredient list as follows:

6.6 lbs plain light malt extract
2 lbs plain light dry extract*
1 lb. 8oz crushed crystal malt
4 oz crushed chocolate*
4 oz crushed black patent*
spice pack*
1 1/2 oz nugget hops
1 oz willamette hops
5 oz priming sugar
nottingham yeast

* extra ingredients not mentioned in instructions

What do you guys think? Thanks in advance

grains are to be steeped for sure. I would guess spice pack is for bottling.

I just brewed a Christmas Ale yesterday. My recipe also had spices in it. It said to tie spice blend into muslim bag and add it to the primary fermenter..The spices included clove, orange peel, cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice...I tied the bag and dropped in the primary (dropped carefully)...

I always recommend letting the brew ferment out alone.

You really want to make sure your brew is a success before adding more ingredients.

Add the spices in the secondary and they'll be more fresh.

Well, since I will be fermenting in a secondary for the first time, I might just go with hb'99's advice. But...

Will the brew retain enough of the flavor from the spices if it goes in the secondary? What's also weird is that the dry malt isn't mentioned anywhere either.

First of all add the dry malt when you add the syrup. As for the spice packet I would strongly urge you to take the advice already given and add it to the secondary. Also, sometimes those spices can really overwhelm a beer so it would be my advice to limit the time you expose the beer to them. If you plan to leave your beer in the secondary for, lets say 10 days, you might want to wait until the last 4-5 days to put the spices in. Or, just go for it and see what happens. Its homebrewing, have fun.

Cheers

homebrewer_99 said:

I always recommend letting the brew ferment out alone.

You really want to make sure your brew is a success before adding more ingredients.

Add the spices in the secondary and they'll be more fresh.

Click to expand...

I wish this thread was around when i was brewing this beer on Sunday..

Bulls Beers: There are several reasons I recommend adding spices to the secondary:

1. You want to make sure your beer tastes good first before wasting more time and money on extra ingredients.

2. This ties in with the first one, if you add spices you don't really know what the beer tastes like.

3. Another tie in, when racking to a secondary you may want to split the batch into two batches, one spiced and one not.

4. Some people insist the spices taste fresher when used in the secondary. I think the jury is still out on this, but it's really just a matter of preference.

All in all, you want to make sure you don't over-spice...it's better to go lightly then to over-spice.

Along the lines of Surfbrewer's recommendation, put your spices in a sack/hop bag/nylon panty hose, etc., for a few days then take a sample. If the spice flavors are too light you can always put the bag back in for a couple more days.

Waiting until it has cleared is a good idea. Then you can let it steep for 4-5 days & check the flavor. Spices tend to fade with time.

homebrewer_99 said:

Bulls Beers: There are several reasons I recommend adding spices to the secondary:

1. You want to make sure your beer tastes good first before wasting more time and money on extra ingredients.

2. This ties in with the first one, if you add spices you don't really know what the beer tastes like.

3. Another tie in, when racking to a secondary you may want to split the batch into two batches, one spiced and one not.

4. Some people insist the spices taste fresher when used in the secondary. I think the jury is still out on this, but it's really just a matter of preference.

All in all, you want to make sure you don't over-spice...it's better to go lightly then to over-spice.

Along the lines of Surfbrewer's recommendation, put your spices in a sack/hop bag/nylon panty hose, etc., for a few days then take a sample. If the spice flavors are too light you can always put the bag back in for a couple more days.

Click to expand...

I agree, That makes sense..I was making it from a kit and the directions said, to add the spices( in a hop bag) to the primary. I'll taste it tomorrow and see what it tastes like... Thanks man...

I have a Holiday Ale in the secondary now....it was a kit from Austin, and they told me to put the spices in during the boil.

Hope it doesn't taste like ass

Actually I tasted after I racked to secondary and it was really a very pleasant taste. Not overpowering at all.

jdd120 said:

I have a Holiday Ale in the secondary now....it was a kit from Austin, and they told me to put the spices in during the boil.

Hope it doesn't taste like ass

Actually I tasted after I racked to secondary and it was really a very pleasant taste. Not overpowering at all.

Click to expand...

As long as it tastes good it should be OK.

The problem is that ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon can be really strong/overpowering. You want to limit/control its usage.

I actually just brewed this very same kit last night. This is only my second brew and the first just went into bottles on Sunday. I added the spices during the last 10 minutes of the brew time. My only fear with adding them to the secondary (I'm a noob mind you) is that the smell/flavor was sooooo strong, I actually thought it a good thing to lose some of it during fermentation. I almost thought it would be way too powerful putting it in the secondary, and most of the spices were powdered except the orange peel so it wouldn't help putting it in a Muslin bag and the flavor would not have been balanced between what you would have expected to get out of the powdered spice and "dried" orange peel. You would also be pulling the orange peel out and leaving all the powdered spice behind. I also thought the little bit of boil would help to release any oils that may be left in the dried orange peel. Probably not the best way to add orange flavor to beer. So we shall see. My .02

Oh yeah, when I pour my wort in the primary, I dump it over vigorously to get as much air in it as possible. Should I be worried that a good portion of the hops go into the primary or is this ok? Should I make a better attempt at getting as much out as possible?

Our Holiday kits are very popular. The spices are balanced so that it tastes correct a month after bottling or kegging. If we made it so it tasted balanced at bottling time the spices would barely be there when it was carbonated. I don't think you can judge any beer by what it tastes in either fermenter.

Just like hops are a spice and if you have a fair amount of them in your beer it will take a while for the beer to be balanced.

Forrest

I'm sure whatever you try will turn out fine. What's the worst that could happen? You make beer? That's never a bad thing.

Trean72 said:

I'm sure whatever you try will turn out fine. What's the worst that could happen? You make beer? That's never a bad thing.

Click to expand...

That's true.

Even if the spices are overdone you can always blend it with a light ale to thin the flavor out.

Well, hopefully this works out, as I did have a very brief boil-over and I left the lid on for a bit. Also, we brewed on Tuesday and the thing is still bubbling away at a fairly good rate. In fact, the airlock got filled with wort. I'm really not sure why. The yeast I used was a nottingham. Does the continuous bubbling activity mean that there is something wrong? Should it not have slowed down by now?