No actual egg nog was harmed in the brewing of this beer!
This wonderful spiced holiday ale recipe comes to us by way of Rusty Burrell AKA Rusty Barrel Homebrewing. It amazingly captures the essence of the classic holiday egg nog drink in a way that is a bit reminiscent of a fuller-bodied Belgian golden strong ale. Below you’ll find the recipe and some process notes that Rusty shared with us. Follow Rusty Barrel Homebrewing at his website, or on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and TikTok. Be sure to tag him if you make your own Egg Nog Imperial Cream Ale or let him know if you have any questions about it. Cheers!
EGG NOG IMPERIAL CREAM ALE
All Grain | 5 gallons
Style: Holiday/Winter Special Spiced Beer
OG: 1.081
FG: 1.011
ABV: 9.2% (See note about ABV below)
IBU: 52.1
SRM: 5.6
Mash pH: 5.3
Malt/Fementables
- 11 lbs Pale 2-Row (62%)
- 1 lb Crystal 10L (5.6%)
- 1 lb Flaked Barley (5.6%)
- 1 lb Flaked Oats (5.6%)
- 1.5 lbs Lactose/Milk Sugar (8.5%)
- 1.5 lbs Cane Sugar (8.5%)
- 0.5 lb Acidulated Malt (2.8%)
- 0.25 lb Rice Hulls (1.4%)
Hops (Pellet)
- 1 oz Northern Brewer (7.8%aa) @ 60 minutes – 23.5 IBU
- 0.6 oz Warrior (15.8%aa) @ 60 minutes – 28.58
Additional Ingredients
- 3.25 teaspoons ground nutmeg @ whirlpool for 30 min (More might be needed based on taste before packaging. See note below)
- 2 vanilla beans – 5 days – secondary
Yeast
- Safale US-05
Process
Starting Mash Thickness: 1.5 qt/lb.
Mash with 5.62 gallons of water to achieve a mash temperature of 152F.
Rest mash for 60 minutes.
Sparge and collect wort.
Boil 60 minutes adding hops and sugars at the times noted. 3.25 teaspoons of ground nutmeg was added to the kettle after flame-out and steeped in whirlpool for 30 minutes before cooling the wort.
Cool wort, aerate, and pitch yeast.
Ferment at 68F until FG is reached.
After primary fermentation, add vanilla beans.
Note on vanilla use from Rusty: For the vanilla bean I split it, scrape the seeds out into a small glass, and then chopped the remaining pod, and added that to the glass as well. Add as little vodka as necessary to cover everything. I usually add all of this to the beer like you would a dry hop; so after fermentation is done, you can do it in the primary or secondary. For this batch, since I was in a rush, I added the mixture to the empty keg in a nylon bag (attached to the post with unflavored floss) then racked the beer on top of it. Doing it that way I feel gets it mixed in well and you can leave the vanilla bean in there for as long as you want or pull it out at any point if you think you have the right amount of vanilla.
Based on your preferred taste, more nutmeg may be needed. Rusty ended up adding another 3.25 teaspoons at kegging by blending the additional nutmeg in a bit of water and adding to the key. This brought nutmeg to a total of 6.5 tsp between brew day and conditioning.
Keg or bottle and serve to friends and family at the holidays!
Note from Rusty on ABV: Looking at the recipe again, I’m noticing that probably the volume and abv are off – I dont think this beer was indeed 9%. I did measure those OG and efficiency values on brewday and also the FG at a later point. But I also added some volume to it later when I added more lactose and nutmeg, not sure how much though. I would guess less than a gallon. I’m tinkering with it in Brewer’s Friend, if I boost the volume up from 5.5 to 6.25 that brings the abv down to around 8.1% which I think is probably more accurate.
See more notes from Rusty’s recipe design and brewing/fermentation here.