Beer Forum

Does anyone have a good <6% ABV Christmas ale recipe? I'm looking for less of a winter warmer and more of a session-y spiced ale for the holidays. The vast majority of the recipes I'm finding are high gravity. The only recipe I could find that fit the bill was a clone in BYO's 100 greatest recipes mag for Summit Winter Ale (RateBeer rating of 84) which comes in at 5.9% ABV.

The other thing to do would be start with a pumkin ale recipe and make some spice substitutions.

You could always lower the base malt in one of those recipes that you find intriguing and therefore lower your potential OG creating your own personal session spice. Just be sure not to overspice your beer for maximum drinkability during the winter mos. You may need to use a lower gravity spiced beer recipe for their addition amounts instead of using the high gravity beer recipes that are typically found which may call for additional spices to be noticed in a larger bodied beer.

Some sort of christmas spiced saison might do the trick for you. You could try a dark saison and spice it up with a little cinnamon and ginger or orange peal.

spiderwrangler wrote:http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=16493

I was going to recommend the same.
Havent even tried it yet. One more week and itll be ready.

Here's a recipe I made last year. You could scale it down a notch or two.

http://homebrewer2005.blogspot.com/2011/10/jul-2011.html

FYI, my cardemom was especially potent last year.