SEYMOUR CRANBERRY JULE ØL (2014 Holiday brew)

[seymour]

SEYMOUR CRANBERRY JULE ØL

This is my 2014 Holiday brew, being a composite recipe resulting from a blend of an April Mild batch and a May Mild batch plus cranberries and refermented with Champagne yeast, bulk-aged for five months before bottling. Other than the cranberries, all perceived fruitiness and spiciness came from grains, hops, and yeasts. No actual spices added.

GRAINBILL
Jule Øl is a Nordic holiday tradition, typically a special dark lager, but my concept is English Brown Ale all the way.

66% UK Pale Malt
7% UK CaraMalt
2% UK Amber Malt
1.5% UK Chocolate Malt
3.5% UK Black Patent Malt
13% Torrified Wheat
7% Brown Sugar
+ 1/2 lb of cranberries per gallon, pureed with some wort, short boil, then added to fermentor.

HOPS
I intentionally selected hops with strong personalities and I’m very pleased with so much flavour and aroma remaining in the final beer. I also enjoy lambics made with a small dose of aged, debittered hops, but that definitely wasn’t the idea here.

Belma, Simcoe, Challenger (1/3 for 60 min)
Simcoe & Progress (1/3 for 30 min)
Simcoe & Sorachi Ace (1/3 at flame-out)

YEAST
Ringwood Brewery dual-strain for primary fermentation
Champagne yeast added to secondary
Fermented around 70°F/21°C

STATS
OG: 1038
FG: 1006
ABV: 4.2%
IBU: ≈27
Colour: opaque dark reddish brown



The base brown ale in primary fermentation


Pulverizing the cranberries with some brown ale


A quick boil to sanitize and slightly caramelize


Champagne yeast starter, once it got chugging along, I poured it into the brown ale batch


The finished product, remaining bottles tucked away until the holidays. Tart and toasty, fruity, complex, darkly delicious.

[Deebee]

SEYMOUR CRANBERRY JULE ØL

Jule Øl is a Nordic holiday tradition, typically a special dark lager, but my concept is English Brown Ale all the way.

Juløl is literally translated as Christmas beer. Most of the beers that are available are basically the normal pilsnners the usually make that have some darler malt to alter the colours. These are the ones readily available from the normal outlets like supermarkets etc.

If you want a proper juløl ( so anything over 4.7%) you need to go to the state owned wine shops. here they do thinks like julebukk which is in the region of barley wine at near on 10%. some of thee are decent some not.

My " juløl" is based either on a brown ale or a darker pale ale, these are mostly hopped with traditional British hops but have a abv of around 6.5-7% darker and more robust than the normal Christmas piss available here.

I believe you are right on the money Seymour

[seymour]

SEYMOUR CRANBERRY JULE ØL

Jule Øl is a Nordic holiday tradition, typically a special dark lager, but my concept is English Brown Ale all the way.

Juløl is literally translated as Christmas beer. Most of the beers that are available are basically the normal pilsnners the usually make that have some darler malt to alter the colours. These are the ones readily available from the normal outlets like supermarkets etc.

If you want a proper juløl ( so anything over 4.7%) you need to go to the state owned wine shops. here they do thinks like julebukk which is in the region of barley wine at near on 10%. some of thee are decent some not.

My " juløl" is based either on a brown ale or a darker pale ale, these are mostly hopped with traditional British hops but have a abv of around 6.5-7% darker and more robust than the normal Christmas piss available here.

I believe you are right on the money Seymour

Cheers, mate. Thanks for the feedback from a real-life Viking brewer!

Yeah, my ABV isn't quite there, but I think it's in that "'Tis the season" spirit of things. I saved you a bottle, will hopefully send it off soon.

[Trefoyl]

I like your back yard
Sounds like a cool idea to try in the future! We're not far from the NJ Pinelands where they grow a lot of cranberries.

[seymour]

I like your back yard
Sounds like a cool idea to try in the future! We're not far from the NJ Pinelands where they grow a lot of cranberries.

Thanks! Yeah, it's small but manageable. Our last house had a huge backyard, but it was a swampy heavy hard-packed clay mess which required constant work but grew nothing worthwhile, so I like this much better.

Also, see that little red brick house on the left? That neighbor was Ehren Schmidt, a Schlafly brewer, former headbrewer of Nimbus Brewing in Arizona. Needless to say we became fast friends when he saw me hosing-out kegs. He'd call me over to share stuff like Russian River Beatification and Westvleteren 12! Sadly for me, he recently moved to Lake Tahoe, California to start his own insane microbrewery. Expect big things.

You're lucky to have those local raw ingredients, go for it!

By the way, didn't you recently offer some Ballantine XXX? I can't find the message though, maybe I dreamed it. If you're up for it, I'll trade you for a bottle of this Juløl.

[Trefoyl]

I did offer. For some reason there are a lot of haters out there (how could a macro make good beer? Ballantine's sucks, etc.) who obviously haven't read all the attention to detail that went into this reincarnation. It's very good and well balanced.
PM me your details and I'll UPS a couple bottles to you.
edit: I hope they reincarnate the regular beer too, I have three Ballantine tap handles from a local antiques guy who are really hoping to pour some

[seymour]

I did offer. For some reason there are a lot of haters out there (how could a macro make good beer? Ballantine's sucks, etc.) who obviously haven't read all the attention to detail that went into this reincarnation. It's very good and well balanced.
PM me your details and I'll UPS a couple bottles to you...

I definitely will do, I'm really excited about that. Thanks in advance!

Hey everybody! In case you don't know, the ultimate American ale yeast we all know and love (and love to hate, but even so...) aka "Chico", Sierra Nevada, US05, Wyeast 1056, WLP001, etc...that's the original Ballantine ale strain. All you Scotsmen in need of vindication: the Ballantine brewmaster was Scottish and supposedly brought the legendary yeast from his homeland. After countless generations making high-grav IPA in huge cylindoconical stainless steel fermentors on a huge industrial scale, we eventually end up with our familiar friend. This is the first time the real Ballantine beer has been brewed in many decades.

...I hope they reincarnate the regular beer too, I have three Ballantine tap handles from a local antiques guy who are really hoping to pour some

No shit?! That's super cool. You should post a picture, if you have the time. Do you have a kegerator or fount or something to connect them to?

[Trefoyl]

You should post a picture, if you have the time. Do you have a kegerator or fount or something to connect them to?

I'll take a pic tonight. One has a light inside, I couldn't believe it! It was still new in the box, but the contacts must be tarnished or something because it's not reliable, it's built like flashlight inside (torch). I remembered I had a keychain maglight that's the same diameter as a AA battery so it fits perfectly without changing anything inside and it can go back to original if need be.

[BitterTed]

I sampled the Ballantine XXX today and all I can say is, WOW!! That's a nice beer!!
BTW, Eastcoast Yeast has a strain called Old Newark, this strain is believed to be the fermenting strain and 1056/001 is thought to be the bottling strain, but no proof of that yet!
Last, I just made a Ballantine IPA inspired beer last week using the Old Newark strain. It will be interesting to see how they compare.

[seymour]

“Beer's intellectual. What a shame so many idiots drink it.”
― Ray Bradbury, The October Country

I love that quote!

[Trefoyl]

You should post a picture, if you have the time. Do you have a kegerator or fount or something to connect them to?

Finally took a pic now that I'm beginning to get things organized in the garage/brewpub. You can't really tell that the wooden handled tap marker is lit because of the flash. And I won't hijack this thread anymore

Only the one in the middle was used, the other two were new in original packaging. He gave me the used one for free because he felt bad the other two were "beer" instead of "ale" He also gave me Ballantine borromean rings cufflinks, also new.

[seymour]

Dude, that is so freakin' cool. Thanks for posting, not a thread hijack at all.