Christmas Ale

Classification: christmas ale, spiced ale, partial mash

Source: Jim Grady (grady@hpangrt.an.hp.com), HBD Issue #1239, 10/4/93

For those who might be looking for a Christmas Ale recipe, here is one that Curt Freeman and I made 2 weeks ago and I just bottled my share this afternoon. We took the spice list from Phil Fleming's Christmas Ale recipe that Kinney Baughman posted here 2 years ago. Since we had had a lot of fun with our first all-grain batch a week or so earlier we decided to do a partial mash (so we each would get 5 gal) and change it from a stout base to an amber base.

At bottling time, it is very good. The cloves and allspice are more pronounced over previous batches (I've made Phil's version for the past 2 years) but that may be due to finally following the directions!

Ingredients: (for 10 gallons)

9# Pale Malt
0.75# Dark Crystal Malt (120^L)
0.5# Caramunich Belgian Malt (60-80^L)
1# German Dark Crystal Malt (20^L)
10# Munton & Fison Light Malt Extract Syrup
2 oz (15 AAU) Northern Brewer Hop plugs (60 minute boil)
1 oz Hallertauer Hop plugs (steep 10 minutes)
1.5# Honey
10 cinnamon sticks (3")
12 oz grated ginger root
zest from 12 oranges
4 Tbs Allspice (whole)
2 Tbs Cloves (whole)
Wyeast German Ale yeast (1007)

Procedure:

Mash pale malt at 156 degrees F for 90 minutes. Add dark crystal, caramunich, and german dark crystal at mash out. Simmer spices with honey for 45 minutes and add after the boil and steep with the Hallertauer.

We added the crystal malts at mash out in an attempt to retain some body. The combination we used was based partly on what I had left over from previous batches. We used a rectangular picnic cooler for the mash/lauter tun. It did not hold the heat very well compared to the insulated box method that we used on our all-grain but we feared that there was too much grain to use the tried & true method.

Specifics:

O.G.: 1.056
F.G.: 1.010