Anyone try randy mosher's Christmas ale?

[brewingbarrister]

Am excited to brew a seasonal ale and wondering if anyone has tried his before? Cheers.

 

[brewingbarrister]

That is to say the one in radical brewing.

 

[tippetsnapper]

I brewed the one that used the brown ale base recipe with the gingerbread spice addition and it turned out great, just needed a month or two for those spices to even out. My family LOVES this beer.

 

[brewingbarrister]

Cool. Thanks for the tip!

 

[Ewen]

Anyone done the Wassail recipe in the xmas section?

 

[brewingbarrister]

I am going to try that Gingerbread ale idea you mentioned. I am in the Richmond area and a local brewery, Hardywood, has a Gingerbread Stout that scored 100 on BeerAdvocate that is supposed to be tasty. Great minds!

 

[tippetsnapper]

Good luck barrister, brew now and give it a couple months to let those spices meld, let us know how it turns out.

 

[jasondirkx]

OP, did you end up trying Mosher's Christmas Ale? I just brewed it (I know, I'm a little behind) and I was trying to figure out if I needed to add additional priming sugar at bottling (in addition to the liquor "potion"). Any thoughts? What did you end up doing?

 

[brewingbarrister]

I never got around to brewing it. Let me know how it turns out! As to the priming I would add the normal amount of priming sugar unless there is frrmentable sugars in the liquor potion. Good luck!

 

[jasondirkx]

So I ended up trying brewing the Christmas ale according to Mosher's recipe and made the 'potion' with the spices and liquors at the same time as brewing. I let the potion sit in the fridge while the beer was fermenting and then filtered the spices out of mixture using a coffee filter (this part was a PITA by the way).

I added just the prescribed amount of potion (250ml) to the bottling bucket and racked on top (which left about 400-500ml of 'spare' potion). A few weeks later, I have sampled a few of the bottles and they are only mildly carbonated.

A few take-aways:
- I probably should have added the potion on top of the beer after racking as opposed to racking on top. The bottling bucket had a strong smell of potion with some of the syrupy stuff at the bottom, so I'm not sure it mixed well with racking on top.
- The beer could probably use a little more potion (maybe in the neighborhood of 400ml total) or some priming sugar to get a bit more carbonation.

All-in-all the beer is really tasty and hella strong. It's only been bottle conditioning for a few weeks, so I think it's going to be even better in a month or so. It definitely fits with the story of "Wassail" accompanying the recipe in Mosher's book!

 

[brewingbarrister]

Thanks for sharing! I have only tried his Belgian single recipe so far. I really enjoyed it. I need to start brewing some of the others.

 

[Tassini]

Hello, I will try the Chistmas Ale next Saturday. What are the suggestions for mashing temperatures? I will use biab. I was thinking in 15 min of protein rest and 60 min a 67°C.