What brews are you gifting for the holidays?

Missed the boat on Thanksgiving, but Christmas and New Years are coming up around the corner. Hopefully if you're planning on gifting some brews they're already in the fermentor.

I've got a few bottles of strawberry wine, some skeeter pee, a sweet cider, a coffee stout, barleywine, blonde ale, ipa, and a saison I hope to give out.

I'm also going to be curing/smoking like a fiend and give out several pounds of bacon to whoever shows up to gatherings.

So what style of cheer are you distributing this year?

 

I've only got a hard cider. My IPA didn't survive long enough. I have however been hanging on to a bottle of 2013 Vintage Ale by Unibroue I was thinking of gifting to a friendly BSDA fan. Wish I had more homebrew for the holidays, I'm horrible at planning.

 

I don't think I will have anything worthy this holiday season. I have a pale ale/IPA in fermentor that really needs to get in a keg. My breakfast stout is just ok at this point but it's still carbing up. The choc hazelnut porter is defective and I'm not sure if diluting it 50/50 with more porter is going to save it.

That said, anyone I know is welcome to ask for a bottle or two of anything I have on hand. I just don't think they are that great.

Oh I take that back. I have a strong stout that is pretty good. Not much of that though.

 

Sounds great to me. I'll try one of each.

 

Imperial stout for a few of my friends that I know will enjoy it / them. I made a 15 gallon batch. 3.5 gallons went into a bourbon barrel, 2 gallons as an expresso version and the rest as a regular imperial.


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Irish Red Ale, Texas Red Ale and a Pacific Saison Ale to my closest friends. After the taste testing these were the most popular.

 

Imperial oatmeal stout with cocoa nibs, cinnamon, and vanilla. Still conditioning in the bottles, it will be 6 weeks in the bottle by Christmas eve, so I'm hoping they'll be good then. It's at 8.1%. It was my first big beer, so my temp got a little out of control for a few hours when fermentation started to really take off. But I was able to notice it and got it under control. So I'm not sure how great it's gonna turn out. It definitely has some fusels leftover from that (I left it in primary for 3 weeks hoping it would mellow some before I bottled). Tried one last night, it's fully carbonated already after 3 weeks in the bottle, but it's definitely not a rounded out taste yet. There was some detectable fusels in there, but not overwhelming. So here's hoping it will be ready by Christmas Eve (where I live they do their main christmas celebration on christmas eve)!

If i had to do something different for next year, I would add more of the 3 extras. I added cinnamon and cocoa nibs 5 mins left in the boil and the vanilla in the last 2 weeks of being in the primary. Next year I'll probably do all 3 in the last 2 weeks of primary and add just a bit more. But then again maybe all of those flavors will be more pronounced when it's conditioned more. I would also change the hops that I used. I just had some leftover hallertauer mittelfrueh and east kent goldings from a batch before, and I didn't want to spend any more money on an already pretty expensive beer. Then I would probably also go ahead and leave it in the fermenter for like 4 weeks (that is if I don't need it for something else). I don't do secondary, and the only reason I bottled after 3 weeks is that I had read somewhere that the off flavors from the yeast can start to come out after 3 weeks. Since then I've been reading of guys leaving it up to 8 weeks without any off flavors.