Spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer Summer/Winter Solstice Clone

[bkasten12]

Sorry to revive an old thread.
I made this recpie a couple months ago and it turned out perfectly. It was a huge hit so I decided to make it again.

I made this last night and my OG was way low. I only ended up at 1.030. I am worried that it will taste watered down and it will be way to week. Does anyone have an opinion on me taking a half gallon and steeping some of the Crystal 40 and 80 grains, then adding 2 pound of light DME, boil it, cool it and add it into my primary to help get my gravity ratings more inline with what it should be?

Thanks

 

[nickmv]

OP, are you sure you got those recipes right? Vanilla in the summer version? Seems to me it'd be in the winter one, wouldn't it?

Are they backwards?

 

[reverendnathan]

Big ol' bump here, but I'm serving this now, and I thought I'd give some notes. This is Winter Solstice by the way, if you can't tell by the frozen fingertips I'm typing this with.

So the rumor the distributor for AVBC only took in so much stock for Winter Solstice, and Total Wine scooped up most of the stock, leaving my local small business shops out of luck for this beer! Now I have to brew my favorite winter beer like some peasant! I used S-04 because I had some to rack onto, and I think it did OK. I think it isn't as multi-dimensional as AVBC's special yeast, but for imitation, it's really, really close. If I had coordinated this better I would have used 002.

Anyways, used two vanilla beans, cut down the middle, chopped, and soaked in 2oz white rum. Let that sit for four days and dumped the "vanilla extract" (hey, technically that's what it is!) into the keg with the finished beer. When I sampled the beer going into the keg (that is, without the vanilla added), sensors in my brain immediately flaired up: "Hey, this is close to what I'm looking for! And there's already hints of vanilla in it!", so I became worried 2 whole beans would have been overkill.

It was. This is a little more intense than the real thing. If I do it again this year, I'll do 1-1.5 beans chopped. But I really, really like the soak in vodka/rum method... way more effective than just dumping in beans in secondary!! I'm really satisfied with this beer, but again, it's a little too gnawing with vanilla intensity, just a warning to tone it down in your own designs.

Great to be drinking this this year!

 

[Drk93TT]

Brewed this recipe all grain 5 gallons couple days ago with 1 more pound of base malt and WLP080 w a yeast starter ... But accidentally added the hops the full 60min boil instead of 15 min Hope it turns out great still ? OG sample was 1.057 and its currently fermenting at 62 degrees with a blow off tube bubbling away last couple days. Will try to keep it there 60-65 degrees range ambient for the next 3 weeks

Maybe a bit more bitter.. Beersmith says ~18IBU vs ~9IBU ... which I doubt would be noticeable any other changes you guys think?

 

[misterdonsheppard]

Drinken a lot of AVBC Winter over the past few years, and am a huge fan. I brewed this recipe as recommended in this thread, and really it wasn't very close. The base was there with the crystal malts but vanilla extract gave it a cream soda taste, and no berry taste to be found.

One thing I think that is overlooked is the fermentation temp. Agree that CA lager 2112 is what to go with, but if you ferment this yeast at a high temp like 68-70* the yeast gives off a nice berry smell and taste. I'd push it as warm as it'll ferment to really get that taste berry taste of AVBC Winter.

Finally, the 3/4 tbsp of vanilla extract to the keg I used was not right for a clone of this beer. I think, as mentioned by others, 1 vanilla bean is the way to go.

The base to the recipe in this thread is there. It just needs to be dialed up b/c it'd be great to have AVBC Winter on tap all year round!


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[bkasten12]

I love this recipe and have brewed it 3 times with great success. I would like to explore making this beer much hoppier, thinking somewhere around 50 IBU's. What hops would you add? Would you just add more NB for a full boil or would you use something like Citra or Galaxy? Let me know what you think

 

[ragefather]

Sure, super easy. Steep the crystal grains like you would any other extract recipe, then just replace the 2-row with 5.5lbs of light DME or 7lbs of light LME. That's it. Proceed from there as normal.

Does anyone know if these quantities are for the Summer or Winter Solstice?

*Edit:
My calculations say this is for the Summer Solstice.

For Winter Solstice assuming a 75% efficiency you would need 7.8 lbs (13lbs * .60) or 9.5 lbs (13lbs * .73) of LME.

 

[daggers_nz]

I'm looking to do the Winter recipe with Belgian Abbey yeast. I'm curious as to why such a late and one-off hop addition, wouldn't it have a weird not-bitter-enough characteristic? Sorry to doubt the OP but I've only seen late additions in Berliner Weisse recipes

 

[bolus14]

Any thoughts on using WY1728 Scottish Ale? I have some washed from a Stout that I could use in this. Its provides a clean fermentation when kept in the low 60's, although I had to raise temp to low 70's to get it to finish, might have been pitch rate though since I pitched from the smack pack.

 

[bolus14]

Another question I have is that Anderson Valley mentions Munich (20L) on their website as part of the grain bill along with Northern Brewer and Liberty for hops.
Any thoughts on how much Munich and where the Liberty might fit in?

 

[bolus14]

I'll be bottling my batch of the "Winter" clone tonight. One thing I haven't found is what carbonation level we should shoot for. The original's carbonation is pretty tame, maybe 1.8 - 2.0, any thoughts?

 

[bolus14]

Well I went with 1.8, hope it works out. I didn't taste this at bottling time but there wasn't much of a vanilla/cream soda smell, although the hydro sampled I had didn't have much of that aroma either. Hopefully after carbing up and chilling the vanilla is still there, I think tit's a key to this recipe.

 

[sirjoel]

Well I went with 1.8, hope it works out.

How did the carbonation turn out at 1.8 vols?

 

[bolus14]

So far I've opened 2 bottles. Carbonation is pretty ideal from what I remember AV WS being, bit right now there's a strange grain/yeast taste going on that in don't like. I opened those bottles after only 24 hours in the fridge so there may have been yeast still in suspension.

This is my first time using a lager yeast so I don't know if it takes longer to settle in the bottle or not.

I have 2 or 3 more bottles that have been on the fridge for 5 days now, might try one tonight, the rest I moved to a 65-70 degree room to age a little. At about 7.3% ABV if I remember correctly a couple weeks of aging mag help it as well.

 

[bolus14]

Just another update...
Appearance wise mine is very close to scottland's picture in post #5, mine might be a touch darker and a touch cloudier but it's very close. The smell doesn't have much to it, sweet malt with a touch of sweet alcohol, maybe, from what I can recall about AVWS it's missing something in the spice arena.

Taste is much like the smell, i really wish it tasted like the hydro sample i pulled when i decided to bottle. It doesn't have the vanilla or cream soda like flavor that I'm looking for, i'm wondering if I should have put the vanilla beans in a bad and weighed them down? The hydro sample may have had more vanilla in it since a lot of the floating beans were at the top. I used two vanilla beans soaked in vodka then added 3 Tbsp of vanilla extract at bottling time...

Mouthfeel wise it's too prickly to be a clone. Either the volume of CO2 needs to be lower than 1.8/1.9, or need to mash higher or and some malto-dextrine to make it silkier.

In the end if you like a malt driven beer it's good, not as caramely/toffeeish as something like an Oktoberfest, more of a base brain maltiness with a hint of caramel in the background. If I make this again, which I may shoot for the Summer version this coming year, I might try to change up the percentages of crystal malts, i'm thinking the amounts might need to be switched. Might even need to make the percentage of crystal 80L be higher to get more caramel flavor. Might even go with 60L instead of the 40L, thinking that even though AV's site says they use 40 and 80 that on the homebrew scale maybe 60 will give more flavor that what we're pulling out of 40.

 

[DirtDiver]

I'm fairly new to brewing but am wondering why we boil 60 minutes when the first hop addition is at 15 minutes. Why not 30 or 15 minutes? Thank you.

 

[Abrayton]

How would US-05 fair as a yeast choice instead of a lager yeast. Also, is the recipe for 5 gallon batch?
Cheers

 

[Abrayton]

Just pulled a sample after 3 weeks in primary. Down to 1.004 but taste is amazing!

 

[Abrayton]

Thinking coco nibs and raspberries in my next batch