Holiday Ale
Posted by FHBS on 6th Dec 2020
Hello Everyone,
What looks to be becoming a holiday tradition we've crafted another holiday ale this season.
To give a little background, last year, back when we could gather and celebrate together, oh those were the times, Shanna asked if we had enough time to have a holiday ale on tap for the upcoming Christmas party we were hosting. She asked this on December 15th. All I could answer was "if we make it today, maybe" We were able to pull it off and created a beer that didn't end up being too spicy or "hot" given it's very short conditioning time. The most received comment on the beer was that it tasted like a melted gingerbread cookie. Sounds good, right? You should make it again. Agreed but we failed to write anything down in our haste to make the beer.
Since we won't be able to gather this year we still decided to make a holiday ale, albeit much sooner in the season. We hope to put together gift baskets for family and friends to be dropped off that will include this year's holiday ale. For this years ale we put together an extract recipe:
We steeped the specialty grains at 152 F° for 20 minutes in 2 gallons of water, added the LME and DME and brought to a boil. Added a 1.0 oz. of Columbus hops at 60 minutes, 1.0 oz. Fuggle at 40 minutes and another 1.0 oz. of Fuggle and 20 minutes before added 1.0 oz. of sweet orange peel and about 1 tsp each of the listed spices. Cooled down to 90 F° and topped up with cold clean water to 5.25 gallons. Added oxygen and pitched 1 packet of S-04 dry yeast. Fermentation started in about 6 hours at 68 F° and iss bubbling away. If this beer tastes as good as it smells in the fermentor we'll be happy. We will try to update once we get o sample this beer on how it turned out. Until then happy holidays and feel free to share any brewing holiday traditions you may have.
Shanna's Holiday Ale
