A Christmas miracle

I’m lucky enough to have an expert brewer down the way.

I checked in with Ron about a month ago when my wife Michele said she wanted to have another Christmas party. He suggested a hoppy, orange ale, and Michele mentioned gingerbread. I suggested a compromise, and Ron took over.

Now, I’ve made beer for years from the kits that include malt, hops, and yeast. Never had a bad batch. They’re easy and fun to do.

But Ron doesn’t use kits. He starts from scratch with whole grains and devises his recipe, which is key when trying to work up a unique Christmas batch that kit makers can’t.

We’ve made two Christmas beers before, and our friends still talk about them. One was a big alcohol barley wine that aged like wine. The other was a cranberry ale that was a perfect match for every single one of Michele’s two dozen cookie varieties, especially the lemon bars.

Our latest looked to be a match to those, and we set aside a full day to brew. Ron was ready to go when I showed up at 9 a.m. to his outdoor brewing patio.

At the outset, we had two goals. First, reaching an 8% alcohol beer. That required a pre-boil specific gravity of 1.063 or so. Second, having it taste like beer, not the syrupy sweet stuff some breweries pump out at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

To be honest, I do a lot of cleaning and nodding of “yes” at these brewings, leaving the math and science to the master. I joked that on his recipe sheet made with the help of a brewer’s app, the “Asst Brewer” line was the only one of 30 left empty. There was no “Chief Bottlewasher” line, sad to say.

All grain brewing is just like what the local breweries do, and the measurements are pretty exact.

But there is room for some fudging. For example, our temperature was off by 2 degrees for the steeping of the mash of 2-row and crystal malt. So we added a little extra hot water. Then, as we measured the wort before the boil, it looked like a tad too much fluid.

We powered ahead, hopeful of course. The worst that could happen is that we make beer. Ron measured the pre-boil gravity. It was 1.065, which is nearly perfect and deserving of a high-five from his wife, Rose.

Ron lit the Hurricane gas burner, and it sounded like a jet engine. The boil started fast.

First in were the Magnum hops. Next, the Blackstrap molasses. Near the end of the boil, we added the sweet dried orange peel and Christmas gingerbread spices that he mixed up in the kitchen.

Finally, we dropped in the New Zealand Pacific Jade aroma hops with about two minutes to go in the boil. Nearly seven hours later, the wort went into a fermenting bucket. A few hours later, after it cooled off, the White Labs yeast was pitched in.

The next day, I feared that we’d missed our alcohol goal. That’s serious business for a Christmas party, folks. I’d done the easy math and come up with a level of 5.9%, based on the initial specific gravity reading of 1.065.

Ron emailed: “The original gravity of 1.065 is before boil. Between further starch break down into sugar during boil, and evaporation so your total volume is less (thereby concentrating more sugar), results in a higher finishing Original Gravity. I checked the OG last night after the wort cooled and before I pitched the yeast. It was 1.081. Fermented down to 1.020 will yield us 8.01% alcohol.”

A Christmas miracle.

Paul Bedard is a senior columnist and author of Washington Secrets.