Holiday Recipes

Hi all, I'm new to this site and I've only been at this brewing thing for less than a year. I was just wondering if anybody had any recipes or ideas for the holiday season? Something that would be nice around Christmas. Thats all folks.

Whatever recipe you go for do the spices on the light side.

I am saying this because if you try to make a full spiced brew this late in the year it won't be ready for Christmas. The spices will still be bitter, especially cloves and allspice.

Trust me on this one. If you're going to do one anyway half the spices.

Either way get back to me around Christmas time and let us all know how it came out.

Good luck.

Do a google search for the "Twelve beers of Christmas" and/or Randy Mosher. Some interesting brews there. I have the book with all of the recipes so I can post one if you like one of them. All the recipes are in Radical Brewing.

Thanks for getting back so quick guys, honestly if I have to condition it past Christmas I'm not that worried about it. Thanks for the ideas though, I think I'm going to try the gingerbread ale, now its just off to maltose express to get some ingredients.

I decided to try my first clone doing a holiday brew I really enjoy- Harpoon winter warmer... It may be a little too fragrant/ seasonal spicy for some of the guys, but I thought it had a great taste/nice aroma.

Ingredients:
6 pounds, Laaglander amber dry malt extract
1/2 ounce, black patent malt
12 ounces, crystal malt
1--1/2 ounces, chocolate malt
1 pound, honey (added with extract)
1 ounce, Clusters pellets (6.5--7.5% alpha) (boil)
1 ounce, Willamette pellets (aroma)
Wyeast British ale yeast (#1098)
1/2 teaspoon, nutmeg (8 minute boil)
1--1/2 teaspoons, ground cinnamon (8 minute boil)
1/2 teaspoon, ground cloves (8 minutes boil)
1 teaspoon, vanilla (5 minute boil)
1 tablespoon, gypsum
1 tablespoon, Irish moss (10 minute boil)
3/4 cup, corn sugar (prime)

Procedure:
Put water on to boil. Add gypsum. Add grains in boiling bag. Remove grains when boil begins. Add extract. After 15 minutes, add bittering hops. Boil 1 hour. Chill. Add aromatic hops. Sparge, add yeast, fill carboy. After 1 week, rack to secondary. Bottle 2 weeks later. batch of Mild (probably YeastLab London Ale (it's a long story)). (By the way, this is my favorite way to pitch *enough* yeast for a barleywine.) Fermentation was active in 2 hours. Primary was about 2 months @ 65-70F, and dropped from 1.105 to 1.038.
Rack into secondary and add 1 oz of EKG plugs for dry hopping.
Bottle about 1 month later. Added new yeast, but no priming sugar.
(*) You can (I did) add more hot water to the remaining mash, and sparge out about 7 gallons more wort to make a Bitter at about 1.045.

Specifics:
OG: 1105-1120
FG: 1038

Comments:
This is a composite recipe, designed to mimick Harpoon's latest Winter Warmer offering. I started with the spice list for Harpoon's Winter Warmer, as published in the Beer News (or whatever that fine newsprint rag found in various lobbies is called). Armed with the spice list, I searched all my HBD back-issues for each spice. Whenever I found one of the spices being used, I looked for its relative weight as compared to all other ingredients in that particular recipe. By doing this for all the spices listed below, I arrived at a statistical "average" for the relative concentrations of all of them together. So maybe I should call this "Statistician's Delight"?

Now, a Christmas beer ... there's still time!

Turkey Day...probably not for a strong brew.

SuperBrew said:

I was just wondering if anybody had any recipes or ideas for the holiday season? Something that would be nice around Christmas.

Click to expand...

Here's one that was from a Christmas Recipe thread.

Wild