Help with a Holiday Recipe

Hello fellow brewers! I am new to brewing and SWMBO asked that I brew her a "Holiday" beer. I did some research and found that Papazians Holiday Cheer was pretty close to what I was looking for. I get to the LHBS and they talked me into buying their "Gingerbread Brown" found here since it was on sale for $20 (I thought $20 for 5 gallons sounds great!) When I put all of the ingredients in beersmith, I found that the estimated ABV is alot lower that I would prefer. OG 1.046 FG 1.015 ABV 4.4%. I messed around with some ingredients in beersmith and can get the ABV up, but Im concerned I will "ruin" the beer. I have a few questions for you guys...
1. Can I raise the ABV by adding something that will give the beer more "holiday" flavor? IE: Brown sugar or Honey? Or should I just add more LME or DME? Thoughts?
3. Both of us love our IPAs. This comes in right around 14 IBUs, would it be ok to add more hops? If so, when and what kind?
2. This recipie came with a small bag of spices mixed together (ginger, cinnamon, cloves) to add to the boil. If I wanted to add cinnamon sticks or fresh grated ginger to the secondary as well...would this make the flavor too over powering, would adding them in the secondary hurt the beer?

Sorry for all the questions, this is my 3 brew and I am trying to expiriment with different things to make these recipies "mine"...

Here is the recipie as is:
6# LME
.5# Special B
.5# chocolate malt
1oz willamate
20 grams "gingerbread" spice

Thanks for any input!

1) Just throw some extra LME or some extra light DME, like is already in the recipe. The beer will end up tasting pretty much the same, but the extra will up the fermentables, so higher ABV. Just be gentle with it, the body of the beer still has to cover the alcohol burn, so you can't just take your beer above that is meant for a 4.4% ABV and bump it up to 10%....it'll taste like rocket fuel.

Add some extra light LME or DME in BeerSmith to the receipe until it is at about 6-6.5 at the most, and you should be fine! Just a rough guess, if you go with LME you'll probably up it from 6 lbs to 7-7.5 lbs to get the correct result.

If you want to go a cheaper route, you could also just add table sugar or honey. Both will ferment out completely. The downside to these is they will also dry out the beer a bit, so less body.

2) If you want to add hops, that's probably be fine, but they might then overpower your spices. The levels of the recipe are probably properly balanced as-is, so once you start adding ingredients/hops/new spices, etc. you are no longer making the proven recipe and are making your own concoction, so no guarantee it'll be as good as the original recipe!!

3) If you don't mind having the prominant flavors in your beer, go for it, but like I said above, the further you stray from the original recipe, the more you are making an experimental beer that may or may not be good. Stray at your own risk! I'd also add the extra spices at the same time you add the original in th4e boil, probably at 5 min left in the boil.

For your next receipe, it sounds like you really wanted a WINTER WARMER style of beer rather than a low alcohol beer flavored with holiday spices. Do a search for WINTER WARMER or check it out on some of the vendor sites. WINTER WARMERS have the same holiday spicing, but are designed up in the 8-10% ABV range, which seems to be exactly what you are looking for.

TopherM said:

Just throw some extra light DME, like is already in the recipe. It will add virtually no extra flavor or characters to your beer, but does up the fermentables, so higher ABV.

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Thanks for the response. That is what I will do, I saw in another post that brown sugar or honey would make it a little like cider. I dont want that.

Any thoughts on the additional spices in the secondary? Or more hops?

Be careful with fresh ginger added after boil it is a very strong flavor. If your going to make it an IPA the drop the spices... hops and spices are not real conducive to each other. If you want a spiced beer then the hops need to be a background. I like spiced beers occasionally and I love IPA's always... never tried to mix them... not sure it would work.