HELP! 1st time recipe formulation

Holiday Ale - I think i have the spices where I want them (but feel free to critique on that), but I need help with fermentables/grain/hops. I would like to shoot for 5-5.5% abv, with a medium body.

I brew extract, full volume boils, and bottle.

Here's what I have:

1 lb Weyermann Caramunich II, steeped at 155F for 30 minutes
7 lb Briess Sparkling Amber DME

1oz Kent Goldings @ 60 min)

1 tsp irish moss @ 15min

1 tsp ground cinnamon @ 10min
1 tsp fresh ground ginger @ 10min
0.5 oz bitter orange peel @10min
0.5 tsp ground allspice @ 10min

Wyeast 1272 American Ale II

I have one beer (barely, I just brewed it sunday!) under my belt, so I'm guessing wildly on pretty much everything. My questions are:

Will 7lbs DME get me 5-5.5% abv?

I've never used Caramunich II before - what will this get me exactly?

Spice amounts ok? What about time? Should I add at 10 minute or at flameout?

Hops? I don't want any real powerful aroma hops to this beer, so I just added for bittering. Using Kent Goldings was a dart throw.

Wyeast 1272 any good?

Thanks for your help!

I'd guess 7 lb of DME would get you >~ 6% abv. You need to use a recipe calculator!
Spices are fine, depending on the intensity you're looking for. Bitterness is going to be pretty low for this heavy a beer (maybe <~ 20 IBU). I realize you want the spices to come through, but this would be pretty sweet. Caramunich is a medium crystal malt - it will add nice malty notes. Wyeast 1272 is fine - with this much going on, you're not going to have a flavor profile that's influenced too much by your yeast strain, unless you pick a less neutral one that gives more esters or phenolics.

Good tip on Hops-

What do you think about 1oz Amarillo at 60min and 1oz at 15min? Or doing that with Cascade? Calculator gives it a 42 IBU when using Amarillo

The Beer Recipator gives me an OG of 1.066, so if I brought that down to 1.020 (does that seem reasonable? I'll be making a starter with 1272) that should give me close to 6% abv.

One other question - what about head retention? I'd like this thing to have a long-lasting head.

Thanks!

This is going to be quite similar to a pumpkin ale. My pumpkin ale was 1.065 and it went down to 1.012. I would not expect as good of attenuation with extract but still I would use .016 as my FG for recipe formulation.

Hops completely depends on what you are trying to accomplish. If you want a good bitterness with nice hop flavor and presence then your Amarillo bill is appropriate. If you are going for a spiced ale/ pumpkin ale flavor then you really do not want hops interfering with the spice and your first EKG bill is much better. If you look at pumpkin/ spiced ale recipes you will see IBUs ranging from 10ish up to 25 or so. Higher than that and people start saying they wish they had gone lower.

Besides, you want and need a sweet backing to the spice on this beer. Those spices without sugar taste hollow without sugar filling in the taste.

great info!

i really don't want a pumpkin ale, i'm looking for something similar to Sam Adams Old Fezziwig. except something that i can drink more than one of without it being overpowering, flavor-wise.

thanks!

A suggestion for the spices:

You don't want to add the spices before or during the ferment. CO2 devolution during the ferment will scrub out all the lovely flavor and aroma; all those little bubbles, carrying away the chemicals that make your senses scream, "pumpkin pie"...

I recommend adding the spices as tea, just before bottling. Before you start racking the fermented beer to your bottling bucket, brew up a strong tea using your spices as written above. Taste the melange (no, not that melange, Muad'dib). If the spices are balanced and blended sufficiently, excellent. If not, tweak the proportions.

Once you've got the spice tea tasting and smelling exactly as you like it, begin racking like your brewing texts tell you for bottle-conditioning. After the racking is finished (or nearly so), start adding the spice tea a little at a time. After each addition, draw a small sample using your sanitized wine thief or turkey baster and taste. When you get the flavor "just right", add slightly more tea; when you've gone just a bit over the top, stop.

Now bottle.

Why did I tell you to go over the top? Because you're about to carbonate the beer with CO2. When the bottle is opened, the foam will carry away some of the spice flavors and aromas. You need to compensate for that. Plus time in the bottle will attenuate the spices, depending on how long you can wait to crack 'em open!

Good luck!

Bob

The spice must flow....

I think i would go with a half tsp of ginger, it's strong and i'm not really fond of it anyway. But that's just me, some people may love it.

NQ3X said:

Taste the melange (no, not that melange, Muad'dib).

Click to expand...

Dune rules.

I would add your spices at 10 min left in the boil. I did a Christmas ale with similar spices and a year later the spices are very pronounced.

Very interesting - I'll definately keep that in mind.

Make a tea using, what, one quart? Will the orange peel come thru if I'm not adding it anywhere and just steeping it in the tea? I'm definately going to let this sit in a secondary, so maybe add the orange peel to the secondary? add all spices to the secondary?

crawford - did you use fresh ground or store-bought ground ginger?

thanks!

Store bought.

Spices are TRICKY, make sure you listen to someone who has a lot of expierience, which i don't.

ah-

in my cooking experience, fresh is weaker than store bought. usually by a factor of 2x.

thanks for the input!

motobrewer said:

Make a tea using, what, one quart? Will the orange peel come thru if I'm not adding it anywhere and just steeping it in the tea?

Click to expand...

A pint or so should do.

Yes, the oranges will come through.

That said, taste the "tea" after a few minutes of boiling. If anything seems out of whack, you can adjust it by adding a bit of this, a dash of that.

Bob

Edited to add: By "make a tea" I mean "boil the spices for ten minutes or so in a pint of water".

brewed this up yesterday! went pretty good, except the near-boil over (6 gallons of water + 7 pounds DME in a 7.5 gallon pot...was pretty tricky)

since i forgot to buy a hunk of ginger when i was at the store, i used 0.5 tsp fresh ground dry (for some reason I had a hunk of dried ginger on hand). I also substituted nutmeg for allspice.

Hit 1.072 before adding 0.75 gallon top-off water. what's the calculation to get true OG?

Also - starters rock. made a 1L starter and it took off within a few hours. this morning it was blasting away, thick krausen. I'm excited to see how this turns out. too bad it won't be ready for 2 months...