Spiced Christmas Ale Recipe Tips?

So yes, it's only June, but Christmas isn't that far off in brewing time! I'm throwing together a recipe for what I'm calling Hrímþurs (Old Norse for "Frost Giant"), and I'm looking for something strong, dark and malty using the spices from traditional Norwegian Christmas cookies.

Here's what I have so far:

Partial Mash, 5 gallon batch

9 lbs. light DME
2 lbs. Munich 20L
1 lb. Crystal 120L
0.5 lbs. Melanoidin
0.25 lbs. Carafa III

1.5 oz. Chinook (60 mins.)

2 tsps. ground cinnamon
1.5 tsps. white pepper
1.5 tsps. ground ginger
.25 tsps. ground cloves

2 packages Wyeast 1728 (Scottish Ale)

OG (est.) - 1097
FG (est.) - 1027
Color - 29 SRM
IBU - 34
ABV (est.) - 9.4%

I plan on doing Deathbrewer's stove-top mash (155 in 2 gallons for 60 minutes, soak and teabag in 2 gallons at 155 for 20 minutes) then adding the DME and hops, then spices at 5 minutes. Ferment in upper 60s.

I figure this one will take a long time to age, which is why I want to get started on it now.

Any thoughts? Thanks!

white pepper? That's interesting. Intuitively, I'd say it's a mistake for a fireside ale, but I haven't tried it myself.

Also, I don't see enough grain there to get the OG you mention.

Otherwise it looks great. Good luck and make sure to get back with yoru results.

what? no spruce A little biscuit malt may do well in helping that cinnamon take on a "gingerbread" feel if that is what you were looking for with the ginger/cinnamon combo. It depends on what you are wanting, But overall as it is, it will make a good beer, I am just assuming with ginger and cinnamon you were looking for "gingerbread flavor".

Otherwise it sounds great. I guess the chinook could be used in exchange for spruce.

I would substitute special B for the Crystal 120......special B is just a tad darker and will give you that plum, raisin dark caramel flavor that works perfectly with spices.....it is almost like C120 on steriods......C150..english extra dark crystal is nice too....

Thanks, y'all!

I ran this through beersmith with the grain bill/DME addition and it's giving me the og of 1097. I haven't done anything nearly this high before, though, so we'll see what happens. (My highest to this point has been a pretty standard 1050.)

I have no idea what the white pepper will be like, actually! I remember reading that some Belgian saisons have pepper in them, and I've had a green peppercorn tripel (yummy!) but never pepper in anything this dark and dense. Worth a shot though, right?

Great call on the special B - I would love to have some of that plum, raisin depth from a dark Belgian in here, and I think that would really work with the spices. We could be moving into fruitcake territory!

And now I'm wondering about the Chinook. I do like spruce, but I'm not sure it'll work so well in this beer. Any other hop suggestions to marry with the rummy, plummy and spicy flavors?

Thanks again!

Mahanoy said:

Thanks, y'all!

I ran this through beersmith with the grain bill/DME addition and it's giving me the og of 1097.

Click to expand...

Sorry, I read 9 lbs, of grain, not DME.

I've made a similar beer that turned out very well. Maybe you can glean something from that.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f76/joie-de-vivre-fake-imperial-pumpkin-154242/

I think sterling hops would be great

That "fake pumpkin" looks great - and congrats on the gold medal!! I notice you thought the spices were a bit overpowering. Which dominated? It seems like that much clove would overpower the cinnamon and nutmeg, and I'm worried about that myself.

I just made something along those lines, just flipped it into the secondary ferment a few days ago, preliminary tasting gives off a strong cloves and cinnamon flavor. OG read 1.062 and I have yet to look at the final gravity since we have not bottled it yet. The recipe is as follows

.5 lb each of 60L crystal malt, Black Patent and chocolate malt
1.5 oz Mt. Hood Hops (boil)
1 oz Cascade Hops (last 15 mins of boil)
6 lbs DME

We put all the ingredients listed below in for the full boil time of 1 hour

3- 2" pieces of Cinnamon stick
1/8 C. Each, Whole Cloves, Black Peppercorns, Fennel Seeds, Green Cardamom
2 Tbs Fresh grated Nutmeg
8 Chai Tea Bags, any variety, however I like the Good Earth brand of tea, lots of flavor and spice
1- 2" rhizome of Ginger: peeled and chopped
We used 1/2 C. Vanilla Extract, but you can definately use vanilla bean if you want.

So far I am happy with the results. But only tasting the finished product will tell me how it came out.

That's quite the spice rack! Do you get any of the fennel or ginger with that much clove and cinnamon?

actually its surprisingly well balanced< I was shooting for mre of a clove and cinnamon flavor than anything else, but if you like the recipe you can easily dumb down the amount of clove so that you can get more of the fennel flavor or even add more of the other spices.

I just made another batch of this and had a fairly large problem with efficiency. I ended up about 10 points low. Should have been 1.080, OG was actually 1.069.

The cinnamon came out way dry and powdery tasting. It's been in the primary for 3 weeks.

SOLUTION:

I added 8 ounces of lactose and it balanced perfectly. It's crashing to 33F now and I'll bottle in a few days.

whenever I use cinnamon I use sticks, powdered cinnamon is too hard to strain out there is always some left in the beer, and it imparts too much flavor usually.