Winter Seasonal Beer Christmas in Belgium

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Im making this tomorrow. Looks like one hell of a concoction. My mouth is watering already. Managed to get everything i need for it but bloody hell them grains of paradise are expensive.
Cheers
 
Poobah58 said:
Keep us posted. Racking mine to secondary this week!
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Howdy. Brewed this last night. Only got an OG of 1.056. But then realised afterwards that Im brewing 5 English gallons not American gallons and didn't scale the recipe accordingly. Smells like Christmas ale. Im still happy with it though, just means i won't be completely tanked after a few bottles.
 
Looks delicious. Any thoughts on an extract version? Not sure if any of those specialties need to be mashed....
 
Just racked to secondary and added the last of the additions. All i can say is wow, the tester was incredible. The cardomom blends really well with the yeast. Gravity down to 1.008 so far.
 
Whats the CO2 volume on this? I'm bottling tomorrow and I was thinking around 3-3.5 like most of my other Belgians.
 
Bottled this Saturday. It finished at 1.009 from 1.085. Yes I may have tossed in a tad more of the candy sugar than I was supposed to, lol. The taste was awesome. Ginger definitely came through. The vanilla is in the background. I maybe should have tossed in another bean late, but I will let it sit a while and see. I cant wait for this to carb up.
 
Bottled this on Friday night. Finished at 1.004. Sample was fantastic, all the spices blended together really well. Will be making this again for sure. I agree that the extra bean for last 3 days will be required next time. 10 out of 10 for this recipe mate
Cheers
 
I apologize if this has been asked, but how long do should you brew this for it be in prime condition before Christmas? I am expanding my fermention capacity this Chris's and want to brew up a election of different Christmas beers next year. Just would like to know when to brew this since it looks fantastic.
 
Poobah58 said:
Polished the remaining 7-8 gallons at my XMAS party! At least I got to enjoy it for a week or so! :D
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I cracked one open the other day. Mmm its a bit like pop! So i had a few more. I have about 20 bottles left for Christmas, if they make it that far. I now wish i had brewed another batch alongside the first. Still got one bottle away for Santa though, or my son will be very displeased
 
Finishing up drinking my half of this beer, turned out epic. We followed the ingredients to the letter, kinda spendy after all that candi syrup! But totally worth it!
 
Ok, so I am nearly through the entire batch now and here are my thoughts:

I began drinking this at about a month old. It tasted very strongly of ginger and little else. I nearly called this one a one time brew from there. However I let this sit another month for a total age of around 9 weeks maybe. At that point this was one of the better home brews I have ever made. The flavors balanced wonderfully. The ginger receded nicely and suddenly the vanilla was very present, as were the "lesser" ingredients. The myriad flavors in this brew worked amazingly well together. The only possible detractor I can come up with is I think the orange peel gets a little lost in the mix. But that's really splitting hairs.

I will be brewing this again and again. I will start earlier next year so I can get some more age on it and still drink it around Christmas. This is a deceptive beer. The alcohol is so difficult to detect that you are 5 pints in and half in the bag before you know what hit you.

This is possibly the best recipe I have ever pulled off these forums. Well done!
 
Thank you. Glad you enjoyed. I felt the same way about the ginger the first time. It does mellow after a few weeks and blends in nicely. I have cut it back the last few beers and some of my buddies yelled at me!!!
 
This really sounds like a great beer and I am a real fan of European beers, particularly Belgians. I want this ready for next Christmas and plan on bottling it and setting it in a closet. When would be a good time to brew up a batch of this? Currently I have a batch of hefeweizen to drink this month until my Chimay clone is ready next month. I have lots of fermentation space as I got a bit crazy about grabbing free food grade buckets from grocery stores. Yeah, I have about 70 gallons of fermentation space!

Anyways, I want to give this beer a chance to really condition and enjoy some awesome brews at Christmas. Do you think April or May would be a good time to brew it and then bottle after proper fermentation time?
 
Thanks! I will put it on the calendar for august.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Home Brew mobile app
 
I'm going to give this a shot next month and I was wondering if anyone who has brewed it has any tips or is it great as is? Thanks
 
I'm going to use Avangard which is German. I'll be brewing this tomorrow morning actually
 
Well. I really mangled this recipe but we will see what it delivers. Couldn't locate whole cardamom locally so I went with some ground. Totally forgot about the ginger so none there and I didn't get the dark amber candi syrup due to mental retardation. I did put extra amber candi in since I had two. Only hit 1.068.

I'll add some ginger to the secondary and hope for good flavor on the final product.
 
Racked to secondary, sample was at 1.008, tasted amazing, then I effed up. Added 2.50 of candied ginger instead of the 1.33. All other additions after that were correct. Read past posts about too much of a ginger taste, how bad is the amount I added, and will it dissipate by December? Add another vanilla bean to offset?
 

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