Turning a Mr. Beer recipe into a clone recipe, PLEASE HELP

[krontron]

Hello all, this is my first attempt at home brewing. I know after I use the Mr. Beer kit I will move on to typical extract brewing and then go from there.

What I am wanting to do is turn their Spiced Christmas Ale recipe here : http://www.mrbeer.com/spiced-christmas-ale-recipe

And turn it into something more along the lines of this one: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f76/great-lakes-christmas-ale-clone-218147/

My basic questions are:

Can I secondary ferment instead of just fermenting per Mr. Beer instructions with a 2 week fermentation period in their fermentor and then straight into pre-primed bottles?

If I were to secondary ferment, I see that the Christmas Ale clone recipe calls for ginger, cinnamon, and honey instead of the Mr. Beer calling for almond extract and mulling spices. If I were to use honey, I would probably need to move the first fermentation to a second vessel and add sugar to that for a secondary fermentation instead of Mr. Beer's method so I don't get bottle bombs. That being said, what ratio to honey/priming sugar do you suggest?

Should I throw some fresh ginger and a cinnamon stick into the wort boil or what are your suggestions on a method off adding these ingredients into the process?

Again what I'm basically wanting to do is doctor up this recipe: http://www.mrbeer.com/spiced-christmas-ale-recipe
to taste similar to Great Lakes Christmas Ale.

Any advice or help would very much appreciated as I plan to brew this in a few days.


Thanks!

 

[jamsomito]

I wouldn't recommend putting honey in the secondary just because the point of secondary is to give the beer a rest off of the yeast - honey will make it active again.

If I had a link I would put it here, so don't think I'm a jerk by making you search for stuff yourself, but there are lots of priming sugar calculators online that will tell you an equivalent amount of honey to use instead of corn sugar/sucrose/DME, etc. Just do a quick google search and you'll find one. I think northern brewer had one I've used before. Also, I would skip honey in your batch all together as it will just all ferment out, leaving no flavor and thinning out your beer (unless this is what you're going for). I would put it all in for priming your bottles though and substitute it for your priming sugar. There's a chance it might leave a trace flavor, and it will do equally as good as any other sugar at priming. The ratio is what you need the calculator to figure out.

Good luck and have fun

 

[krontron]

Thank you very much for your reply. I think just removing the honey from the recipe all together is probably the smart thing to do. If you're saying it would be very hard to get any hints of it in the brew then I will just not put it in the recipe.

I have definitely made a note of one of those calculators you mentioned as well.

Thanks!