Suggest me a Christmas/Holiday SESSION beer!

[puravida]

Christmas Day is 5 weeks away. Clearly not enough ttime to brew a big Xmas beer but should be okay for a lower abv 'session' beer at around 4-5% that brings in some of the Christmassy spices, aromas and flavours right?

I'm looking at this recipe but dialling back the OG to around 1045 by reducing the Pils malt. I'll probably use lager malt instead too and leave out the DME.

Bad Santa — John Zelazny
(5 gallon/19-L, all-grain)
OG = 1.085 FG = 1.018
IBU = 40 ABV = 8.6%
Best of Show, 2010 New York State Open (282 entries)

Ingredients
12 lbs. (5.4 kg) Canadian Pils malt
1.0 lb. (0.45 kg) Munich malt
0.50 lb. (0.45 kg) Carahell® malt (19 °L)
0.50 lb. (0.45 kg) CaraMunich® malt (30–40 °L)
1.0 oz. (28 g) black patent malt
1.0 lb. (0.45 kg) light dried malt extract
13 fl. oz. (384 mL) maple syrup
1.5 lbs. (0.68 kg) dried cherries
12 AAU US Northern Brewer hops (60 mins)
(1 oz./28 g of 12% alpha acids)
Wyeast 1084 (Irish ale) yeast
1 vanilla bean (split)
3 cinnamon sticks (3 inches, broken into pieces)

Step by Step
Strong Scotch ale base. Mash all grains at 152 °F (67 °C) for 60 min. Mash out at 168 °F (76 °C) for 10 min. Add dried malt extract and maple syrup at boil. Steep cherries in 2 qts. (2 L) of first wort runnings for 30 min. Strain out cherries and add this wort at end of boil. Ferment at 62–64 °F (17–18 °C). Dry spice in secondary for 2–3 weeks.

 

[RobWalker]

I can't comment for the recipe, but I can give you a few tips to get it ready quickly...

Fruit will take ages taste good. it kicks up a lot of raw flavour. maybe syrup from the raspberryade topic will be a good replacement for a quickly ready to drink beer...

spices, chuck them in at 20 minutes and forget steeping. way too time consuming at this point!

high mash temp = malty = generally ready to drink quicker imo. but that's down to taste.

lastly, i caramelize the maple syrup in my xmas beer, and it's mind blowing. i'd totally suggest it, but that's your choice :P

 

[puravida]

Oh fantastic!! Thanks very much! They're great tips!
How did you caramlelise the maple syrup? Just boiling it for a while?

 

[RobWalker]

Yeah just in a seperate pan - I tend to add a little water too - just heat it on a medium heat, it will flare up so make sure you have loadddss of headroom! Then when it really flares up, its done. Pour it straight into the boil without adding anything to the pan and leave the pan to cool. If you don't, you can wreck your pan :p