AHS Chocolate Orange Holiday Ale (21B) - ALL GRAIN

All Grain - the clove smell/taste is overpowering everything else in this ale. Cloves go a long way and I believe the holiday spice pack has too much clove in it.

I can definitely taste the chocolate. It might not as present as a Young's Double Chocolate -- but, it is very good. It's possible AHS may have added more Belgian Chocolate to the kit since the 1st reviewer. Didn't taste any presence of Orange. Instead of Corn Sugar -- I used DME for priming. Nice creamy head. Although different types of beer -- my wife I compared this with a Sam Adams Chocolate Bock last evening. Hands down -- we both agreed the AHS Chocolate Orange Holiday Ale was better. Will definitely brew again. Might add an additional oz of chocolate next time (and Orange peel)...but, really fine the way it is.

This beer is ok. I had higher hopes, would be the best way to describe it. I also should have paid more attention to the recipe - I didn't expect a stout. I can taste the chocolate very well, and there is a note of orange, but the cinnamon is lost to me. I don't think I'll brew this one again.

LME version. Came out OK...slightly more bitterness towards the end than I would have expected. Great aroma and in my experience, the head retention is out of this world...literally had to scrape it off with a knife a few times. I'm bottling though so I get a little bit of variation from bottle to bottle. This has definitely gotten better with age and some cold storage in the fridge...still not the best I've ever had and probably wouldn't order this particular recipe again.

I did the partial mash of this. My OG was off, but in retrospect I think it may have been a measurement error bc the final came in as expected and the taste isnt "off" at all. Its definitely a deeper flavor than I had expected. I bought it hoping it would be similar to a Sam Adams Old Fez. Its definitely got a "stout" bite to it. The chocolate is very dry. If you like dark beers with a bit of bitterness/roast flavor to them, you'll enjoy this beer. If you like the Sam Adams Holiday porter or the Saint Arnold Winter stout (or similar), you should also really enjoy this beer. I originally had it on CO2 but after having a couple of glasses I decided it was more suited to beergas. As a previous poster commented, huge head retention on it. I had to warm it up to purge enough CO2 to keep from making a Nitro foam fest. On beergas it is a very good beer. I'd like to try again and see if I end up out of whack on the OG again. Next time I'll go full blown all grain though. One caveat - if you use an autosiphon, the orange in the spice pack tends to clog while you're transferring to secondary or to bottling/kegging, so keep a spray bottle of starsan with you while you transfer it to avoid contamination b/c you'll be pulling the siphon tube out to clean it regularly.