Holiday Beer!

Bill and I brewed our holiday beers tonight. They'll take a few weeks to ferment, and then we want them to sit and mellow in the bottles as long as possible, as opposed to drinking them right away. We figure we'll bottle in 3-4 weeks. His doesn't have the high sugar content mine has, but still, the longer in the secondary fermenter, the better.

The recipe...

Steeping grains:
8 oz Black Patent malt
8 oz Chocolate malt
16 oz English 2-row, 80L malt
16 oz Cara Red malt

Steep for 1/2 hour, in 3 gallons of water, for 30 minutes at 158°F.

Get that tea boiling, add 3 lbs Munton's Dark dry malt extract (DME), 6 lb Munton's Light DME, 1 lb amber rock candi sugar, and 1/2 oz Irish moss.

Get boiling again, add 2 oz Centennial 9.1% alpha hops, boil for an hour.

Shut boil down, add UK Challenger 7% alpha hops, let sit for a few minutes.

Top up to 5.5 gallons with cold water, continue cooling to 70°.

Take gravity measurement: 1.098. DAMMIT! I hate not breaking 1.1 on these big beers. Oh well.

Add Scottish Ale yeast. Aerate like crazy, close up the bucket.

If I can get this down to 1.020 final gravity, we're looking at a 10.3% ABV beer.

So, rack it down to the secondary fermenter this weekend, let it sit a couple more weeks, and target a bottling date of 10/13 or 10/20, depending on how the gravity number are going. One week in the bottle before we crack the first ones, for the carbonation and flavor test.

Maybe another one in early November. But this one needs shelf time.