Winter Spiced Ales
I’m sure my mouth was hanging open as I stood in front of the wall of unusual and rare beers at Reno Homebrewer in Reno, Nevada. One group in particular caught my eye: Anchor Brewing Company’s Our Special Ale from the past ten years. Every year since 1975 Anchor brews what they call a “Christmas Ale.” Each year the recipe is different so they label them with the year brewed. I quickly grabbed one of each year, with the intention of doing a little vertical tasting.
In theory, you could take almost any base beer, add some “holiday” spices, and call it a holiday spiced beer. However, nine times out of ten it probably won’t be a very good one. The best base beer for this style is one that has a full, rich malty sweetness with hints of caramel and chocolate, very similar to a dessert. English old ale, or any similar style, is a good base for making holiday spiced ale. I’m referring to rich, dark, figgy, fruity old ale. Not the hoppy, blonde, high alcohol beers sometimes sold as old or stock ale in the US. Holiday spiced beers are usually rich, slightly sweet beers with gentle warming alcohol and spices, which seems like a requirement for a beer to be enjoyed in the late fall or winter. The rich bready, fruity and caramel notes of the old ale and the holiday spicing are reminiscent of an English Christmas pudding or good, old fashioned molasses cookies. As in most spiced beers, hops do not play a big role in this style. Hop bittering should be firm enough to balance the beer, but hop aroma and flavor should be background notes at best. You don’t want hops competing with or masking the spices.
The proper base malt for this beer is British pale ale malt, which is kilned a bit darker (2.5 to 3.5 °L) than the average American 2-row or pale malt (1.5 to 2.5 °L). This higher level of kilning brings out the malt’s rich flavors. British pale ale malt is also highly modified and well suited to single infusion mashes, typical for all British beers. A mash temperature around 152 °F (67 °C) creates wort with the proper balance between long chain, non-fermentable sugars and simpler fermentable sugars for this beer. If you’re brewing with extract, your best choice is an extract made from British pale ale malt. There are some British style malt extracts made from 100% Maris Otter malt which are an excellent choice for English beers. If you end up using domestic 2-row malt or extract made from it, you’ll need to compensate with additional specialty malts such as Biscuit or Victory, but use restraint.
In this style, hops are best used for bittering only, as too much hop flavor and aroma can mask the spices. Why not just add more spices so they can compete with the hops? While that may be possible, too much hop and spice flavor in a beer negatively impacts its drinkability. If you decide you do want a subtle background hop flavor, using a lower alpha acid English hop such as Kent Golding, Fuggle, or Progress for the bittering hop addition will result in a delicate background hop character. This is because large hop additions, even early in the boil, can be tasted in the finish. I prefer to leave the hop flavor out and instead use a clean, higher alpha acid hop, targeting a bitterness to starting gravity (IBU divided by OG) ratio of 0.4 to 0.5. For bigger beers, use a ratio on the higher side, reaching 0.5 around 1.100 SG. For smaller beers, use a ratio on the lower side reaching 0.4 around 1.065 SG, because all things being equal, a higher starting gravity usually results in a higher finishing gravity. The higher the finishing gravity, the greater amount of bittering required to balance the beer.
There is a lot going on in this beer with the spices, fruity esters, alcohol, and rich base malt, so I keep it simple on the specialty grains. A moderate dose of dark crystal (~80 °L) for about 5% of the grist adds a nice dark caramel/raisin note, good for enhancing that dessert character. A touch (< 3%) of highly kilned malt, like black patent (~525 °L) adds ruby highlights to the color, helps balance the residual sweetness with a tiny touch of roasty dryness, and can add a subtle background chocolate or coffee note.
A friend once told me that you cannot make old ale without treacle. If you expect the beer to age for some time, treacle can be nice. If you plan to drink it soon after fermentation, then it might be best to leave out the bold treacle flavors or cut back substantially. While some people think treacle is just the British word for molasses, there are many products labeled as “treacle” or “molasses” and they’re all slightly different. Treacle appropriate for brewing old ale is sometimes referred to as black treacle. It is dark, sweet, and full of highly caramelized notes. Some people say blackstrap molasses is an acceptable substitute, but my preference is Lyle’s Black Treacle, which you can find at many English specialty shops if your homebrew shop cannot get it for you. If you can’t find treacle, you can add 0.5 lbs. (227 g) of crystal 150 °L malt instead. The beer won’t be the same, but it also won’t cost you $5 for a can of treacle either.
You certainly can go with more specialty malts for a richer, bolder beer, but when brewing with spices, you don’t want to mask any subtle spice flavors or have to increase those spices so much that they begin to add a different character than the same spice at a lower concentration. The trickiest part of brewing a great holiday spiced beer is being able to brew a great old ale and then enhancing (not ruining) it with spice. Focus on the spice aroma first and the spice flavor will follow. While this style requires obvious spicy notes, the best holiday spiced beers use spice flavors and aromas as an accompaniment to the malt and fermentation derived esters. The spices should blend harmoniously with other aspects of the beer, not overpower them. However, many spices vary in strength based on the source of the spice. If you’re not able to source the same spices grown under the exact same conditions each year, you’re going to have some variability. Even if you could get exactly the same spices each time, how you add them to the beer makes a big difference.
If possible, buy fresh, whole spices and grind or crush them yourself right before use. There are two times you can add spices to a beer: during the boil or post fermentation. The easiest is to toss them into the boil during the last few minutes, letting the heat and the water extract the spice character. This is a good method, because there is no danger of contamination and extraction happens quickly. The drawback is that you don’t know how much spice character you’re getting until you taste the beer after fermentation. Another issue is that the character of many spices changes once heated in the boil and they can seem cooked or bitter in a short time.
The alternative is adding spices directly to the beer. Adding spices after the bulk of fermentation is done allows for better precision, as you can taste the beer every few days to see how the flavor and aroma develop. Of course with this method there is some danger of contamination, especially in beers with a moderate level of alcohol. You can also boil your spices for a few minutes in a little water and use that to dose the beer to taste.
A trick you can use when making any spice beer is to make an extract of each spice. Add each spice to a half-pint (237 mL) mason jar about half full with vodka and close the lid tightly. Over several days, the alcohol and water act as a solvent to gently extract color, flavor and aroma from the spices. This works well for a number of spices and beer styles, but the flavors and aromas don’t seem quite right if this is the sole source of the spice notes, so it should only be used to tweak the spice character of a beer.
The best technique for old ale is a combination of these methods. Add the spices late in the boil, but use restraint. If it turns out the spicing wasn’t enough, you can bump it up by boiling some spice in a little water, making an extract in vodka, or adding dry spices post fermentation.
When using dry spices in the fermenter, I wait until the beer is past primary fermentation. I add the spices loose to the fermenter and within a couple days they will usually sink to the bottom. Regular taste tests let me know when the beer has just the right spice level. At that point I keg or bottle the beer, leaving the spices behind. This process gives you more control over the spice level in the beer and adds a fresher spice flavor and aroma than an all-boiled spice addition.
Select an English-type ale strain for this beer. The esters these yeasts typically create can add to the character of the beer. Even though this style is often described as dessert-like, you don’t want the beer to finish too sweet. It is better to stick with one of the more attenuating English strains, such as White Labs WLP013 (London Ale), Wyeast 1028 (London Ale), or Danstar Nottingham. If you want the flavor profile of a favorite English yeast and it happens to be less attenuating, you will need to craft a more fermentable wort by replacing a portion of the base malt (grain or extract) with simple sugar (table sugar is fine). If you’re an all-grain brewer, you can alternatively choose a lower mash temperature.
I prefer cooler fermentation temperatures for bigger beers made with English-type ale yeasts. With smaller beers you can push the temperatures up into the low 70s °F (low 20s °C) to produce more esters without a lot of hot alcohol notes. For bigger beers, I wouldn’t exceed 68 °F (20 °C) for the bulk of fermentation. I like a subtle alcohol character that is gentle and is warming only as an afterthought. I dislike any beer with hot, solvent-like alcohol and I find a cool, steady fermentation with an appropriate pitch of yeast makes all the difference in the world. However, you need to use some care with most English yeasts and big beers. Too cool a fermentation temperature or overnight temperature drops when already fermenting cool can cause the yeast to flocculate early, leaving the beer under-attenuated and sweet. Another thing to keep in mind is that these strains will often produce a fair amount of diacetyl and you’ll want to raise the temperature a few degrees for the last 1⁄3 of fermentation to clean up the beer. Control fermentation temperature, pitch plenty of clean, healthy yeast and serve your holiday spiced beer at 50–55 °F (10–13 °C). Carbonate around 1.5 to 2.0 volumes if serving at this temperature. English ales fermented hot may have plenty of yeast character when served cold, but they tend to also have a number of harsh alcohols as well. When served cold enough to hide the hot and harsh flavors, the malt character (and in this case the spice character) becomes dull and muted. Contrast that with a cooler fermentation, where yeast-created flavors and aromas are more restrained. When combined with malt and spices that only really present themselves fully at warmer temperatures, it can make for a wonderful drinking experience.
Christmas in a Bottle
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.090 (21.6 °P) FG = 1.022 (5.6 °P)
IBU = 43 SRM = 20 ABV = 9.0%
On a cold winter’s night, build a fire and pour a glass of this beer to make a memorable beer moment.
Ingredients
17.5 lb. (8 kg) Crisp Maris Otter or British-style pale ale malt (3 °L)
11 oz. (312 g) Briess crystal malt (80 °L)
3.5 oz. (99 g) Briess black patent malt (525 °L)
10.4 AAU Horizon hops (60 min.) (0.8 oz/23 g of 13% alpha acids)
1⁄2 tsp. Cinnamon (ground, dry), (1 min.)
1⁄4 tsp. Ginger (ground, dry), (1 min.)
1⁄8 tsp. Nutmeg (ground, dry), (1 min.)
1⁄8 tsp. Allspice (ground, dry), (1 min.)
0.5 lb. (227 g) Lyle’s Black Treacle (100 °L) (optional)
White Labs WLP013 (London Ale), Wyeast 1028 (London Ale) or Danstar Nottingham yeast.
Step by Step
Mill the grains and dough-in targeting a mash of around 1.5 quarts of water to 1 pound of grain (a liquor-to-grist ratio of about 3:1 by weight) and a temperature of 152 °F (67 °C). Hold the mash at 152 °F (67 °C) until conversion is complete, which should be less than 60 minutes. Raise the temperature to mash out at 168 °F (76 °C).
Sparge slowly with 170 °F (77 °C) water, collecting wort until the pre-boil kettle volume is around 6.5 gallons (25 L) and the gravity is 1.070 (17 °P). Optionally, add treacle to the wort stirring thoroughly to avoid scorching.
The total wort boil time is 90 minutes. Add the bittering hops with 60 minutes left in the boil. Add Irish moss or other kettle finings with 15 minutes remaining and the spices with one minute left in the boil. Chill the wort rapidly to 67 °F (19 °C), let the break material settle, rack to the fermenter and aerate thoroughly.
Pitch 15 grams of properly rehydrated dry yeast or use three liquid yeast packages. Alternatively, make a 5-liter starter using one package of liquid yeast, letting the starter ferment out fully and pitching only the resulting yeast into the wort.
Ferment at 68 °F (20 °C), raising the temperature to 70 °F (21 °C) during the last 1⁄3 of fermentation to help reduce diacetyl and assure complete attenuation. Allow the lees to settle and the brew to mature without pressure for another two days after fermentation appears finished.
Rack to a keg and force carbonate or rack it to a bottling bucket, add priming sugar, and bottle. Target a carbonation level of 1.5 to 2 volumes.
Christmas in a Bottle
(5 gallons/19 L, extract with grains)
OG = 1.090 (21.6 °P) FG = 1.022 (5.6 °P)
IBU = 43 SRM = 21 ABV =9.0%
Ingredients
11.7 lb. (5.3 kg) John Bull Maris Otter, Edme Maris Otter or fresh equivalent English-type liquid malt extract (3.5 °L)
11 oz. (312 g) Briess crystal malt (80 °L)
3.5 oz. (99 g) Briess black patent malt (525 °L)
10.4 AAU Horizon hops (60 min.) (0.8 oz/23 g of 13% alpha acids)
1⁄2 tsp. Cinnamon (ground, dry) (1 min.)
1⁄4 tsp. Ginger (ground, dry) (1 min.)
1⁄8 tsp. Nutmeg (ground, dry) (1 min.)
1⁄8 tsp Allspice (ground, dry) (1 min.)
0.5 lb (227 g) Lyle’s Black Treacle (100 °L) (optional)
White Labs WLP013 (London Ale), Wyeast 1028 (London Ale) or Danstar Nottingham yeast
Step by Step
Mill or coarsely crack the specialty malts. Mix them well and place loosely in a grain bag. Avoid packing the grains too tightly in the bag, using more bags if needed. Steep the grain bag in about 3 quarts (~3 liters) of water at roughly 170 °F (77 °C) for about 30 minutes.
Lift the grain bag out of the steeping liquid and rinse with warm water. Allow the bags to drip into the kettle for a few minutes while you add the malt extract and the optional treacle. Do not squeeze the bags. Add enough water to the steeping liquor and malt extract to make a pre-boil volume of 5.9 gallons (22 L) and a gravity of 1.077 (18.7 °P). Stir thoroughly to help dissolve the extract and bring to a boil.
Once the wort is boiling, add the bittering hops. The total wort boil time is one hour after adding the bittering hops. Add Irish moss or other kettle finings with 15 minutes remaining and the spices with one minute left in the boil.
Chill the wort to 68 °F (20 °C). Aerate thoroughly and pitch 15 grams of properly rehydrated dry yeast or use three liquid yeast packages. Alternatively, make a 5-liter starter using one package of liquid yeast. Ferment at 68 °F (20 °C), raising the temperature to 70 °F (21 °C) during the last 1⁄3 of fermentation to help reduce diacetyl and assure complete attenuation. Allow the lees to settle and the brew to mature without pressure for another two days after fermentation appears finished.
Rack to a keg and force carbonate or rack it to a bottling bucket, add priming sugar, and bottle. Target a carbonation level of 1.5 to 2 volumes.
