On August 8th, I brewed 2 beers. The first was an evolution of my Brett B pale ale. Batch 1 was just straight 2-row and Motueka hops coming in around 3.5%. It fermented quickly and was dry hopped before kegging. That beer has since kicked so I wanted to brew it again but this time I did some changes to the recipe and used Citra. Fermentation has slowed a bit and the krausen has dropped so I’ll be dry hopping it today and will be kegging it at the 4 week mark. It probably could go longer but I won’t really know until today’s gravity reading. The Belgian Wit will be kegged at week 4 as well but it’s pretty much done and tasting really nice.
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This week, some more grain arrives for a few new projects. One of these projects are kits and one is a re-brew.
Up First: Consecration Clone. This is the kit from MoreBeer and while I think kits are pretty dumb, this one is a fairly good deal considering the contents which includes Dried Currants and oak that was taken from a previously used Consecration barrel that should have a few bugs intact. This will take at least 6 months but I should let it go up to a year before drinking. For that reason, this carboy will pretty much live way back under the stairs in my cellar so it’s not in the way. I’ll just ignore it until it’s ready. This will be the longest fermentation I’ve done so far with 2nd longest being my first Berliner Weisse which too 3 months.
Second: Tart of Darkness Clone. I like ToD a lot and ordered 2 bottles from Bruery earlier this summer. This is quite good fresh and the commercial version is a stout soured with all kinds of wild yeast and fermented in Black Tuesday barrels. Fermentation estimate was at least 12 months. So this will be a similar beer but not exactly. So I’ll probably be drinking this one next Fall.
Another beer being brewed is a re-brew of my Imperial stout that was done last Thanksgiving. We just drank my last bottle of this and it’s tasting great. This was a time and cost expensive beer to make but the results were absolutely worth it. The first batch was almost 25 pounds of grain coming in around 12% and then 12oz of Blanton’s were added, 3 vanilla beans and 2 french oak spirals. It conditioned for 6 months before I tapped it in July. I enjoyed this beer a lot and rebrewing it now means I can enjoy it again this Winter.
Finally, another moderately long fermentation is going to be an experimental sour blond ale that will be soured to taste and when I think it’s ready, I’ll let it enjoy 30 days with sour cherries before finally kegging it. This recipe will hopefully be tweaked over time until I get a recipe that I really like and then it will simply receive various fruit additions.
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On a personal note in home brewing, I’d like to start doing more re-brews where I look at tasting notes and try to find improvements and then re do that beer. The last “new recipe” I want to do is a straight unblended lambic recipe where I brew that same beer once every 6 months, making tweaks each time and hopefully blend the batches to taste. this is a very complicated thing to take on especially considering home-brew and personal skill set issues which means batch variations. Hopefully I’ll have 6 carboys full of “fake lambic” that I can blend and have friends come over for a blending party to find what works the best in 2-3 years.
Other than that, I’ll keep redoing my wit, hefeweizen, brett B pale ales, Saisons, berliners and other styles I like to see how they come out and what changes can be made to improve them.
Since the beers above will take a while to complete. I’ll be brewing some of the beers above in the coming months so the kegerator will remain full.