Charlottesville Area Masters of Real Ale

This is the recipe that I will be making for Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day.  It is a modification of a recipe from Jamil Z., whose Winter Warmer was too high gravity for my mash tun to make (used almost 20 lbs of grain and mine can only hold 14, maximum).

Spiced Winter Ale

Ingredients:
- 13 lbs British Pale Ale Malt (original recipe calls for 19.5 lbs)
- 0.75 lbs Crystal 80 Malt
- 0.25 lbs Black Patent Malt
- 1 oz Horizon hop pellets (ended up using Progress hop pellets due to hop shortages)
- 1/2 tsp Cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp Ginger
- 1/8 tsp Nutmet
- 1/8 tsp All Spice
- London Ale Yeast
- Bottling Sugar

Stats:
- O.G. - Unknown (original was 1.090)
- F.G. - 1.022
- IBU - 45
- Color - 19 SRM (approximate because I changed the amount of Pale Malt)
- Alcohol - 6.5% (original was 9%)

Instructions:
- Mash at 152 F for an hour using 1 quart per lb of grain
- Sparge at 170 F until you have 6.5 gallons of wort
- Boil for 90 min
- Add hops 60 min from flame out
- Add spices 1 min before flame out
- Ferment at 68 F in primary and rack to secondary when mostly complete
- Taste beer when racking from primary to secondary and adjust spice flavor if necessary with appropriate spice slurry.
- Add bottling sugar and bottle
- Wait three weeks for bottle conditioning and enjoy

Couple things about the actual brewing of this beer.  The grain sucked up more sparge water than anticipated, so the total output, after boil, was down about a half a gallon.  The gravity was slightly higher than I anticipated, as well, around 1.070.  The wort smelled awesome, as we put it in the fermentor, a lot like pumpkin pie.

Finally, the people attending the Teach a Friend to Homebrew day named the beer "Slap the Bag Ale . . . A Spiced Chrismas Beer."  The story is long and involved, check out my blog for more information:  http://wallacesouthbrewnews.blogspot.com/