Well, even though summer itself is still 3 weeks off, the weather has started behaving like summer already... I need to put the finishing touches on my outdoor ice-powered keezer, so I can start using it. It just needs the finishing bits of caulk around the seams outside, then the internal tubing & a Cornelius keg poppet connector or two. Add the taps (I've got a couple of old spares) and it's golden! The first beer on tap will be my India Pale Lager, done with the snow melt from Snowmageddon. Beyond that, I don't know.
Meanwhile, some other experiments are moving along nicely. The dual-batch brew I did a couple of months back at Night on the Town were bottled this weekend; I'm still in favor of the all-grain version. The extract version has a much lighter mouthfeel--almost to the point of being thin--and a touch of a 'stale' cardboardy taste. The AG version is fuller and more flavorful, with a stronger malt profile to balance the hops. I'll have to see about doing that one as a full batch, and soon...
On the last brew day, I did a half-batch small beer from the second runnings of the main batch; the only yeast I had available was some dry wheat beer yeast (well, OK, I had some wine yeast, but I think EC-1118 would have been overkill). So far, I think it's done fermenting; still cloudy as can be, but that's the point of a wheat beer yeast, isn't it? I'll try to scrounge some bottles this weekend and bottle it up. Finally, the brew I did with the last of the killer bee honey (just what was adhered to the sides of the jar) and a bit of DME has dropped pretty clear; I don't think it'll amount to more than one, maybe two bottles... That should be done up this weekend, too.
That's all that's brewing here, at the moment. What do you folks have going on?Labels: equipment, Events, experiments, Updates