Beer Style: Specialty Beer Family
Winter Seasonal Beers
Learn the secrets to brewing a wintry, warming, holiday beer and check out five best of show winning recipes.
Winter Warmer: Tips from the Pros
Pro brewer Matt “Handtruck” Thrall of Avery Brewing Co. in Boulder, Colorado, shares some advice for brewing a winter warmer.
Pyment
Pyment is a product fermented with grapes and honey. This recipe also adds some tropical fruit to round out the character.
Basic Sweet Mead
A low-key, one-gallon (3.8-L) batch of mead. This is a great recipe to experiment with several different honey varietals for comparison sake.
Basic Dry Mead
A basic dry mead recipe. This is a great opportunity to test several honey varietals.
Dogfish Brewery’s Head Midas Touch clone
This beer was inspired by residue found in drinking vessels that are believed to be from the actual tomb of King Midas. Some secrets of the beverage, dated to around 700 BC, were revealed by the new methods of molecular archaeology.
The residues inside the vessels belonged to a “Phrygian cocktail,” which combined grape wine, barley beer and honey mead. Starting with the ancient chemical evidence, Dogfish Head Brewery “recreated” a marvelous golden elixir, truly touched by King Midas.
Buzz’ard Double Chocolate Espresso Stout
by John Arthur and Glenn BurnSilver
Extra Shot of Espresso Stout
Imperial Stout, also known as "Russian Imperial Stout" or "Imperial Russian Stout," is a strong dark beer or stout in the style that was brewed in the 18th century. This Imperial Stout, with coffee is by Doug McNair, Redhook Breweries
Cause of Death
Did you ever want to do something just because someone told you it couldn’t be done? A comment at a homebrew club meeting sets a homebrewer on a quest to brew an all-grain beer over 20% alcohol by volume.
Red Hot Blond
The second place winner, Steve Hacker, was a Belgian-style golden strong ale enlivened by a healthy addition of Red Hots, the bright red cinnamon candy. Again, the actual entry was a spinoff of a 5-gallon (19 L) batch, so the amounts have been extrapolated.
Wee Hottie
Kuyler Doyle’s “Wee Hottie” took second place behind the ZEALOTS entry. Kuyler’s choice was dictated by the style’s primary ingredient. “I thought the malty sweet character of a Scotch ale would pair well with spicy heat from chiles,” states Kuyler. “Since Scotch ales are allowed to have a smoky flavor, I went with that as the link. I added some rauch malt to the blend and used smoky chipotle peppers for the heat and flavor.” Like the ZEALOTS, Kuyler did a spinoff of a 5- gallon (19-L) batch. The recipe below has the peppers scaled up for full a 5-gallon (19-L) batch.
Chili Head Fred Barleywine
Marc Martin headed a group of Austin ZEALOTS who were out to make a name for themselves at the Dixie Cup. Marc, the Primary Fermenter, Corey Martin the Secondary Fermenter, and another key member, Keith Bradley, decided they should honor the ever present Fred Eckhart by brewing a clone of that famous namesake Barleywine made by Hair-of-The-Dog brewing, “Fred.” After a lengthy (12 hour) brew day and six months of aging, two quarts were tapped from the keg and sliced Jalepeno, Serrano and Habanero peppers were steeped in the cold brew. Spoonfuls were tasted at 8–12 hour intervals until just the right level of heat was present to mingle with the malt and hops. Balance with a lingering heat was the goal and it was obviously achieved, since it took home first place!
