newbie christmas recipe - help?

[lord groan]

I want to get a brew underway which will have a christmassy feel to it, I will be using leftovers in my grain bucket and I've come up with this recipe as a 1st suggestion, any advice or comments very very welcome, particularly regarding the hop combinaton - I'm looking for citrus/floral aroma in addition to the clove/cinnamon/orange zest flavour. I have very little experience of hop combinations (that may be obvious I guess).
4000g Pale malt
300g crystal
100g flaked barley
40g black

Hops added at boil
13g target
10g styrian
10g boadicea

10 minutes from end
10g boadicea
then at flame out 3 cloves, 1/4 tsp cinnamon and zest of 1 orange. leave 30mins and chill.

Your thoughts?
Thanks

[Pinto]

The xmas spices are very, very potent - you might find that the hops can be somewhat overwhelmed so might be a good idea to ramp them a little and chuck a nice dose in the dry hop stage. I found that the bramling X hops I used in my xmas bitter last year worked very well indeed, with hints of rich fruits and some citrus too - almost made for it ! (read here - http://www.britishhops.org.uk/bramling- ... roma-tall/ )

Also, my magic xmas bitter ingredient - prune juice - adding a litre brought an earthy, "pudding" like body to the brew

[lord groan]

Thanks Pinto - I hadn't thought of the masking effect of the spices, I'll tweak the hop content a good bit higher. I'd settled on around 35 IBU as reasonable for a bitter, but definitely hadn't factored in the spices. I'll have to think about the prune juice!
Thanks for the good advice

[Goosey]

Anyone know exactly when to addd the prune juice? Into the boil? During fermentation? After?

[Goosey]

No-one?

[Deebee]

The xmas spices are very, very potent - you might find that the hops can be somewhat overwhelmed so might be a good idea to ramp them a little and chuck a nice dose in the dry hop stage. I found that the bramling X hops I used in my xmas bitter last year worked very well indeed, with hints of rich fruits and some citrus too - almost made for it ! (read here - http://www.britishhops.org.uk/bramling- ... roma-tall/ )

Also, my magic xmas bitter ingredient - prune juice - adding a litre brought an earthy, "pudding" like body to the brew

I always make a tea with the spices after the fermentation is pretty much done. add a little at a time, stir gently then tast.. repeat til you get to where you want. let stand til fermentation is completely done and bingo:)

[Goosey]

I've already let the spices sit in a bag in the beer and it's now fermenting (without the bag). I was planning to put it into secondary then add the juice. Does that sound okay?

[Barley Water]

You realize that if you add any sugars in secondary (including prune juice) if will start the fermentation going again, right? You can do it but make damn sure that juce is pretty clean when you add it least you end up with an infected batch. I have often added sugars to Belgian beers in secondary to make sure I get good attenuation but I sterilize them before adding them to the fermenting beer. I would also expect it to dry the beer out as well as thin it a bit because what you are doing is adding a diluted sugar source to the beer (both of which are fine as long as that is what your are trying to achieve). As far as the hops go, I respectfully disagree with the previous poster. If you are looking for a spice addition to make the beer more "Christmassy" (if that is a word) I would back down on the hops rather than increasing them. I would be afraid the hops would clash with the holiday spices so I would opt to feature one or the other but not both. I agree though that the spices can easily get to be way too much. Alot depends on the O.G. of the beer and I can't tell by what you posted what you are expecting although I would think most spiced holiday beer would be pretty big and boozy. Anythow, take all that for what it's worth because after all, it's only one Texan's opinion anyhow.