Good morning all. Brewed my entry for the 2023 12 Beers of Christmas this weekend (the Spiced Dunkle Weizenbock). Decided to go all in on the "Christmas in July" theme for the brewery. It was all Christmas all the time in the third bay.
Pulled out a few of my favorite Christmas LPs to provide the atmospherics. Made for a delightful brew day and attracted a few curious neighbors as an added bonus. Good times.
Brew day went swimmingly. Hit the recipe right in the numbers and the spices at the end of the boil had the whole garage smelling like elf farts (in a good way).
Speaking of elf farts, I've been burned one too many times by spice additions in the boil, so I dialed back Randy's recommendations a bit. Hydrometer sample proved that the wort is still plenty spicy (with the caraway seeds surprisingly in the lead). Plan on having a tincture on hand at kegging to adjust to taste using the tried and true three sample/average out/scale up model of flavor additions.
Since this is a bigger beer I did a step starter for the Belgian Abbey II yeast (WY1762) so I had a nice slurry of healthy yeast. I must have been a good boy this year because the fermentation took off like a shot. Within the first 12 hours I had to switch from an airlock to a blow-off tube on my fermenter. First time I've ever had a 6g batch max out my 30L Speidel and it's still bubbling away frantically on day three - epic.
All in all an excellent brew day. Very interested to see how this beer turns out and equally excited to share it with the group.
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