Belsnickel Spiced Christmas Ale

I teach religious studies at a regional Midwestern university, and a group of homebrewing faculty are brewing beers to celebrate the diversity of beer in the United States and to call attention to issues of water quality and conservation. Our public tasting session for the University community will be in December, so I decided to brew a spiced Christmas ale. I'm calling it "Belsnickel," which is the Pennsylvania Dutch name for Santa Claus and an homage to my home region of southcentral Pennsylvania.

Here's the recipe. (I just brewed it yesterday and its going crazy in the carboy as I type...)

Belsnickel

7.0# light DME
2.0# Munich malt
0.5# Caramunich
0.5# 120L
0.5# Special B
0.25# Roasted Barley

(Deathbrewer's stove-top partial mash method)
Mash grains @155 in 2.5 gallons for 45 minutes
"Sparge" @165 in 1 gallon for 20 minutes


2.0oz Chinook (60)
0.5oz East Kent Goldings (10)

1 Whirfloc tablet (10)

2 small cinnamon sticks
6 whole cloves
1" peeled and chopped fresh ginger (all at flameout)

(Topped off to make a little over 5 gallons)

2 pkgs. Wyeast Scottish Ale (#1728)

Fermenting @75F


OG = 1.080
IBU = 50
SRM = 28

Once primary fermentation is finished I'll check the spices and, if needed, add the same amount of spices to the secondary. I'm also thinking of adding a little lemon or orange peel to the secondary, but I haven't decided on that yet.

It's actually a really cool project we've got going. There are four of us in the group and we're each brewing our own recipe. Also, two of the guys are brewing the same exact recipe but using different waters: they're brewing a pretty basic cream ale, one with tap water and one with reverse osmosis water.

In addition to the two cream ales we've got my Christmas spiced ale, a Belgian trippel, an Amarillo/Simcoe Imperial IPA, and a tribute to colonial American beers using pumpkin, blackstrap molasses, spruce tips, and some smoked malt.