Winter Solstice Brew recipe commentary

[lexuschris]

Winter Solstice Brew


Hey all,

I am wanting to brew a spiced malty brew for the holidays at the end of this year. This is one of the recipes I cobbled together from a little research. I don't remember the base pieces, but it looks like something between an english brown and a porter, with holiday spices.

I am thinking of brewing this on the 23rd of the month, and would appreciate any comments & suggestions. (I plan to bottle it and keep it aging until Thanksgiving)

I would probably want to replace the powedered spices with fresh un-ground equivilants, but need to find out some stengths. I figure, I can go a little aggressive on the spices, as I have 8 months of aging to melllow that out..

Thanks all!
--LexusChris

[lexuschris]

After researching futher, I upped the chocolate & victory malts. I also converted over to fresh/grated spices and ajusted quantities & boil times. I am using about 50% of the maximum suggested in the BYO brewing w/spices spreadsheet. I'm aging this until the holidays, so plenty of time to mellow out the sharp spice flavors.

btw.. could not get the recipe edit page to allow me to type in grams for my water additions and items or tsp. for my spices. I updated the 'notes' with the proper figures...

Now, if I can just get Sunday to have about 5 hours of sunshine.. I'll be good to go!
-LexusChris

[lexuschris]

Novice brewer here. Flubbed up my mash temps today. Worried about the rain clouds, I spontaneously decided to move into the garage for the 1st time. In between setting up folding tables, etc. I forgot to put my strike water in the tun first, and ended up doughing in ontop the grains in a cold tun.

Lots of bubbles, dough-balls, and a temp around 160-F initially. Waited 10 mins while stirring.. got down to 158-F. Dang! So I added .66 gal cold tap water. Stirred, now at 149-F. (was shooting for 154-F). Tried to quick heat .33 gal to raise temp, but by then, my temp was down to 147-F.

Brought my sparge water up to 170-F, and then added a gallon of that to get the mash to 149-F. Decided that was good enough, and kept it there for 30 mins.

So, I ended up changing my taget volume to 5.5 gal, and sparged with only 2.75 gal. The rest of the day went perfectly. (thankfully!)

I used freshly grated ginger & orange zest, as well as new cloves & cinnamon. After the cool down, the hydrometer samples were very tasty & very much in the 'holiday cheer' arena of flavors. For all the mash crazyness, I nearly hit my OG with 1.071, and it tastes like the beer I wanted.

The hard part of this one is waiting 6 months before I sample it. It is all going into bottles, so will help me forget about it until Halloween..

Hope everyone had a good weekend!
--LexusChris

[oc eric]

Novice brewer here. Flubbed up my mash temps today. Worried about the rain clouds, I spontaneously decided to move into the garage for the 1st time. In between setting up folding tables, etc. I forgot to put my strike water in the tun first, and ended up doughing in ontop the grains in a cold tun.

Lots of bubbles, dough-balls, and a temp around 160-F initially. Waited 10 mins while stirring.. got down to 158-F. Dang! So I added .66 gal cold tap water. Stirred, now at 149-F. (was shooting for 154-F). Tried to quick heat .33 gal to raise temp, but by then, my temp was down to 147-F.

Brought my sparge water up to 170-F, and then added a gallon of that to get the mash to 149-F. Decided that was good enough, and kept it there for 30 mins.
--LexusChris

Sounds like my last brew day

[brahn]

I forgot to put my strike water in the tun first, and ended up doughing in ontop the grains in a cold tun.

I just did that two batches ago on batch #66! Drinking a pint now though and it tastes fantastic!