Goose Island Christmas Ale Clone

[meyers.markg]

Does anyone have one? I really want to try to brew it myself and I asked the brewer for some help. This is what they gave me:

While I can't give you our exact recipe (Ratios / hopping rates) I do think I can give you a shopping list of ingrediants to get you started.

Malt bill. (All Briess malt) Pale malt as base. Caramel-120, Briess Extra Special, and a small amount of Dark Chocolate malt. Color target is approx. 30 (or a nice Garnett)

Hop Bill (2009) Columbus for bittering. Columbus and Mt. Hood in the whirlpool. Target BU's around 55. Last year hopping was a mix of Glacier (bittering) Willamette and Tettnang(Whirlpool)

We use our standard Goose Island House ale strain for fermentation and hold its temp at 67.

He said the color is 30. I'm guessing that's EBC (but I did find an odd beer color scheme that put it closer to 20 SRM). If it's EBC, then that means the SRM is around ~15.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[a10t2]

It's been a couple years since I had the beer, but I think this should actually be pretty easy to nail down based on all the intel they gave you.

93% pale, 3% C120, 3% Extra Special, and 1% chocolate gets the color right - the ratio of C120/Extra Special could be changed without impacting the color much though, that and the amount of hops in the whirlpool are really the only variables. About 17 AAUs of Columbus for bittering, and shoot for an OG of about 1.055. Hope that helps.

[meyers.markg]

I just pulled a sample for a reading. It's pretty tasty, and still pretty hoppy. I went with 4% each of Special B and 120. The malt flavor and color isn't dark enough. I'll try 5% each. This time I will prime with molasses.

Here was the recipe as it was brewed:
http://hopville.com/recipe/84646/old-al ... -christmas

Here's the proposal:
http://hopville.com/recipe/120560/old-a ... 16-version

I might adjust the hops. Right now the Colombus is in your face but goes nicely with the dark malt.