🍺 Top-down Brew: Autumn Seasonal Beer With Spices

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Variations

Steeped grain plus malt extract:

Delete the American two-row malt line.
For liquid malt extract, add sugar: Liquid light malt extract, 86, 5, 76
For dry malt extract, add sugar: Dry light malt extract, 86, 3.5, 96
Set the mash efficiency variable to 55% for steeping.

Metric spices: Cinnamon, .2 g/l, ground ginger, .1 g/l, allspice, .05 g/l, clove, .05 g/l.

Explore other malts, sugars, and hops

Results

Notes

This is an autumn seasonal ale (BJCP 2021, 30B) with spices brewed in September, 2024. Everyone seems intrigued by warm spices in the late fall. Ginger, cinnamon, and caramel flavors are my favorites.

The base recipe is based upon average amounts from beer-analytics.com. No pumpkin was included in the fermentables to keep this easy. The specialty malt choices were convenient: what I had on hand.

Average bitterness: 24 IBU
Average color: 13 SRM (Note: The above recipe is slightly lower than 13.)
Original extract: 1.060 (14.7° Plato)
Hops: Magnum 100% (bittering only)
Malts/sugars: Rahr two-row, Briess crystal 60L, Briess crystal 90L, and brown sugar

The spice additions are based upon "Gingerbread Ale" from Radical Brewing (Mosher, 2004, p. 169). These are added late in the boil, when about 10 minutes remain.

1 tsp (4 g) Cinnamon (dosage: .03 oz/gal or .2 g/l)
.5 tsp (2 g) ground ginger (dosage: .015 oz gal or .1 g/l)
.25 tsp (1 g) allspice (dosage: .01 oz gal or .05 g/l)
.25 tsp (1 g) cloves (dosage: .01 oz gal or .05 g/l)

The yeast was a repitch of Lutra kveik yeast.