On Friday we brewed our first Christmas beer! With about seven weeks until Thanksgiving and the start of the holiday season, we definitely had to get it brewed so that it will be ready in time to enjoy during the holidays. It's been since the start of September since we brewed a beer, and it was great getting back into it.
The beer we chose for our first Christmas beer is "Bad Santa" from https://byo.com/stories/item/2258-winter-seasonal-beers. It has cherries, vanilla, cinnamon, and an 8%+ ABV. We achieved a little brewing milestone with this beer - our first trip to the home brew store where we only bought ingredients!
The brewing was a pretty straightforward extract beer with specialty grains. The one interesting step in the recipe was taking out some of the wort and soaking the dried cherries, then adding that liquid back in at the end of the boil.
This brew day was also the first time we got to try our new wort chiller from Northern Brewer. It did cool the beer a lot quicker than an ice bath would have, especially for a batch as big as three gallons. It still seemed to take a while though. I'm wondering if it would cool even faster if we ran the water piping through an ice bath before it reached the wort chiller to really get it super cooled though. Maybe time to invest in a second wort chiller and then run the two in series.
We used an Irish Ale yeast according to the recipe, but the recipe calls for a 62-64 degree fermentation temperature which we've had a little bit of a hard time hitting. We've been keeping the fermenting beer in the laundry room with the vents and door closed, then opening the outside door as needed to drop the temperature down. It's staying relatively cool but I have a bad feeling the temperature fluctuations are more than what the yeast would like.
If everything goes well, hopefully our first Christmas beer will be ready in late November. Can't wait to see how it turns out!
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