Christmas beer

[lord.president]

Hi,Whacking on a Christmas beer next week (I know!) using the recipe in 'Homebrew Handbook'. It has Star Anise,cinnamon sticks,cloves,ginger and nutmeg. I'm wondering if there's room for orange zest in there too?

Pilsen malt 3.4kg
Vienna 1.1kg
Carmalt 454g
Victory 454g
Caramunich 226g
Honey malt 226g
Carafa I 113g
Dark candi sugar 226g

Saaz 16g 1 hour
Hersbrucker 16g 1 hour
Styrian Goldings 14g1 hour and 15 mins
Hersbrucker 15g 5 mins

[Rookie]

Hi,Whacking on a Christmas beer next week (I know!) using the recipe in 'Homebrew Handbook'. It has Star Anise,cinnamon sticks,cloves,ginger and nutmeg. I'm wondering if there's room for orange zest in there too?

If it sounds good to you, go for it.

[AdyG]

I stuck some orange zest in mine last year and it worked well along side the cloves cinnamon, ginger etc. Remember not to put too much of any of the Christmas flavours in, I think I put them in to steep at flame out for an hour before cooling and that was enough.

That's got me thinking about my Christmas beer now! I didn't do mine until the last minute last year so it only had about 4 weeks to condition in the bottle.

Recipe looks good by the way, might go for something a bit more German this year myself...

[lord.president]

Did this on Friday afternoon. Left recipe as it was,above and 5g Star Anise 20 mins,3 cinnamon sticks 10 mins,7 cloves 10 mins,30g root ginger 10 mins. Added zest 2 oranges and half an orange of juice at 10 mins too. Smells wonderful in FV. Happy the weather has cooled down a bit,kitchen has been at 18 degrees for about a week now.