Fruitcake Holiday Ale - Part 1

After the rousing success of Oktober Surprise, I started thinking about what my Christmas beer would be. I've done winter warmers in the past, but wanted to do something different. After gingerbread and peppermint, there's nothing more Christmasy than fruitcake.

Fruitcake can be really good when it's done right. Problem is, hardly anybody makes it right anymore. Dad made a pretty tasty loaf, and he said the key was booze. The fruit should be macerated in liquor and the finished cake should be occasionally drizzled with it as well to keep it moist and unspoiled. (Good luck finding any store-bought fruitcake with alcohol in it.) Dark rum is a solid choice, but brandy works well. If you're feeling rustic, then go with applejack.

Since making a fruitcake and jamming it into a corny keg would make a bit of a mess of my dip tube, I'm going with my base & tincture method. Alton Brown has been a tremendous influence on my cooking, so I checked out his Free Range Fruitcake recipe to see what he used. He doesn't use any of the store-bought candied fruit (green and red-dyed oranges?!), instead macerating his own blend of dried fruits in dark rum along with lemon and orange zests.

Of course, a baking recipe will only go so far in creating homebrew. I did a little googling and found a Fruitcake Ale recipe in Sam Calagione's Extreme Brewing. Their fruit bill was similar to Alton's but not as broad (dried cranberries, pineapple, cherries, raisins, crystallized ginger) and it was added to the boil at flameout. It also lacked a spice component.

In the end, my tincture is closer to Alton's recipe:

Fruitcake Ale tincture
pineapple rum	2oz
vanilla vodka	1oz
macadamia liqueur	1oz
clove	1
allspice	3 seeds
dried lemon peel	1T
orange zest	1T
dried cherries	1oz
dried apricot	1oz
dried cranberries	1oz
raisins	1oz
candied ginger	1oz

My choice of liquors is mostly based on the flavors they would add. I didn't have any pineapple on hand, but I had plenty of Malibu. I wasn't sure I wanted to go so far as to toast pecans and add those, so I opted for some otherwise unused macadamia liqueur I picked up in Hawaii many years ago. The vanilla vodka wasn't all that great, (sorry Dogfish Head) but I'd rather use it than dump it.

My brewdog Bo ready to clean up anything that drops.

Long story short, I chopped up the fruit, smashed the allspice, zested the orange and mixed it all together. I covered and stored in a cool, dark place overnight. In Part 2, we'll give the tincture a try in a sample of the base beer.

The hooch

One clove and 3 smashed allspice berries

The finished product 

Mr and Mrs Claus keeping a watchful eye