wrote in message ...
Does anyone have a good recipe for holiday brew with low carbs?

Lara, please forgive some of the other respondents - they're not well
rounded in the art of "homebrewing." After all, this is amateur radio
homebrewing.

OK, on to the ale.

Get malt with a high conversion ratio - that is, you want malt that
will ferment to dryness without much residiual sugar left behind.
Left behind sugars can also mean flavor, so your brew will lack a big,
malty flavor, but that's OK for a holiday brew style.

Are you using all-grain or extract? Munton & Fison extract usually
does well in this area. If you are using all-grain watch your mash
temp and get the best extraction that you can. Leave out all or most
of the specialty grains, and keep the SG reasonable. You can even sub
some cane sugar for some malt to reduce the unfermentables. Remember,
though, lots of alcohol is lots of carbs.

Next, what do you plan to add to make it "holiday?" Most folks like
orange zest and strange spices. I'll leave that up to you as even my
Belgians are sans the strange stuff.

Next is the yeast. Get a Belgian yeast with high attenuation, that is
it will ferment out all the malt sugars (or at least most of them). I
like White LAbs yeast in vials - no need to "smack" or any of that
nonsense.

http://www.whitelabs.com/craft_belgianyeast.html

To recap, get good extraction so that unfermentable sugars are low,
keep the SG reasonable (most Belgian beers are not so reasonable), and
get a high attenuation yeast to ferment the brew to dryness.

Finally, start real soon or it won't ready.

I think I'll go pop the top on a kwak-clone that I made last spring.

73, Brian