Holiday Yammer – A Winter Warmer

12 lbs of roasted yams

Hi there! This past Saturday we brewed a winter warmer for the upcoming holidays affectionately named Holiday Yammer. We followed the base beer style of 18ED “Belgian Dark Golden Strong Ale” but will enter it in the 21B subcategory of “Christmas/Winter Specialty Spiced Beer”.  This style of beer allows for much greater brewer creativity and is often big, malty, and spicy. This brew was inspired by an old favorite – The Bruery’s Autumn Maple.

Juli blending away

The night before brew day, we ground whole cinnamon sticks and cloves and we combined these with powdered ginger to create a potent home-made pumpkin pie spice. We tried a mix with nutmeg, but the nutmeg completely overpowered the other spices so we omitted it. We ended up following spice ratios from the classic “Libby’s Canned Pumpkin” pie recipe. We then roasted 12 lbs. of yams in the oven for 2 hours at 400ºF and let them sit out overnight in the skins. The next morning, the skins were loose enough to peel off easily by hand. We  peeled and puréed the yams with a hand blender in 1.5 gallons of strike water to be added to the mash. We ended up with 8 lbs of roasted skinned yams for the mash.

Our original target mash temp. was 154°F, but after adding all 35 lbs of grain plus our 8 lbs of yams we had no room to add additional hot water to adjust the temperature. We ended up mashing at 150°F with a mash thickness of about 1.25 qts/lb of grain (not counting additional thickness from the puréed yams) for 90 minutes. After vorlauf and a very successful 20 minute recirculation we ran off the first gallon or so of wort into the boil kettle, then the dreaded stuck sparge happened. 1 pound of rice hulls turned out to be no match for the 8 lbs of yams! We unstuck the mash by blowing back into the grain bed then remixing the mash and performing the recirculation all over again until we were satisfied with the level of clarity. The sparge process went from 45 minutes to about 90 and we ended up with almost 14 gallons of wort.

Mash recirculation

Our pre-boil gravity was a bit low. After the fact, we noticed there was some serious channeling surrounding the outside of the grain bed during the last 30 minutes of the sparge. In retrospect, we should have carved some channels of our own through the grain bed repeatedly during the sparge to avoid this. The post-boil original gravity was supposed to be 1.104 but it ended up being 1.090. Later on, as we were mostly satisfied with this number, we went ahead and added an additional pound of corn sugar to the fermentor at high krausen. This added an additional .04 gravity points.

Hot break forming

The boil went for 75 minutes, with hop additions at 45 and 20 minutes. The spices, yeast nutrient, maple syrup, and dark candi sugar all got added at the 20 minute mark with no boil overs! The technique we like to employ when chilling wort consists of a few things depending on the type of beer we’re making. For this batch the whirlpool went for the last 20 minutes of the boil to sanitize the pump and tubing. We kept the whirlpool going for an additional 5 minutes at flame-out, then turned off the pump and let the trub pile settle up. Prior to connecting the line to the plate chiller, we purged about 1 liter of wort to remove that first blast of trub and hop debris from getting into the fermentor. Normally, we fill the sink with ice and water to provide cold water for input into the plate chiller. This time, we decided to fill a 10 gallon igloo cooler with water and ice instead to increase the volume of icy cold water we started with. This worked great and we were able to chill the wort to 65ºF and transfer it to the conical in about 25 minutes. We plan to make a vanilla bean tincture to add to secondary depending on what this beer does. More info about this to come.

As usual, we will update this as things progress. Happy Holidays (in 3 months)!

Wax dipped!

*Update 9/18/13: We took a gravity reading and tasted this beer and decided against adding any vanilla. This beer is lighter (almost amber) in color and full bodied. The pumpkin pie spice additions really come through as well as the yam. We are really happy with this beer and can’t wait to share it! We’re planning to carbonate it to 3 volumes in the bottle this Sunday.

*Update 9/24/13: We bottled 5 gallons of this beer into 375ml bottles last Sunday and ended up wax dipping them too! We figured these will make great gifts for the upcoming holidays. Anyhow, we went with 166 g. of corn sugar to bottle condition around 3 – 3.5 volumes of carbonation. We’re hoping the tight, effervescent carbonation will enhance the mouthfeel with an emphasis on the spices.

Holiday Yammer (Winter Warmer)

Lead Brewer: Dave

• Mash: 150°F for 90 minutes (1.25 qt/lb)
• Final volume: 12 gallons
• OG: 1.094
• FG: 1.022
• ABV: 9.4%
• IBU: 25

Grain Bill:

• 30 lb (64.5%) Maris Otter
• 2.5 lb (5.4%) Wheat (Flaked)
• 1 lb (2.2%) Crystal 70
• 8 oz (1.1%) Crystal 120
• 1 lb Rice Hulls

Sugars:

• 8 lb Yams (17.2%) – Mash Tun
• 1.5 lb Maple Syrup (3.2%) – 5 Min.
• 1 lb Candi – Dark (2.2%) – 5 Min.
• 1 lb Corn Sugar – (2.2%) – Added at high krausen (day 2 of fermentation)

Hop Schedule:

• 1 oz Mt. Hood (4.5%AA) – FWH
• 1 oz Nugget (13%AA) – 45 Min.
• 1.5 oz Hallertauer (3.9%AA) – 20 Min.

Spice Additions: 4 Tbsp of spice mixture

• Cinnamon: 4 parts
• Ginger: 2 parts
• Clove: 1 part

Fermentation:

• Yeast: Safbrew S-33 (2L starter)
• Primary: fermented at 66°F

Carbonation:

• 166g Corn Sugar for 5 gallons. Hoping to have a medium-high carbonation level, somewhere around 3 volumes.

Miscellaneous:

• 2 Whirfloc Tablets – 20 Min.
• 2 Servomyces – 20 Min.
• 2 tsp Yeast Nutrient – 20 Min.
• Aerated cooled wort for 1 minute with pure oxygen