Since last update, I’ve been doing a ton of brewing–nearly a batch every week! Perhaps the most satisfying thing, though, was reorganizing my brewing space. It had been close to a year since the last major cleaning and reorganization, and it sorely needed some attention. I tossed out trash, reorganized my malts, put some brewing salts into jars, and so on. Organization is only temporary, of course, but it’s a nice kind of temporary.

Beer Batch Updates

• My Christmas Warmer has been conditioning for about a month now, and with another week or two should be ready to drink.
• I kegged the session stout on 22 November, and started the carbonation with corn sugar. It finished up carbonation from the CO2 tank, and is now on tap.
• The rebrew of Tremonia Lager just got kegged tonight. It’s happily lagering at 33° now, and will go on tap after the Pfriem Pils clone. So, it should get a good stretch of time to condition out!
• On 21 November, I brewed a clone of Avery Brewing’s Maharaja IPA (“Mahajanga IPA”). This was my first super high gravity batch on the Foundry, and I definitely missed my numbers by a bit. I aimed for 1.088, and hit 1.077–after adding a pound of DME. This works out to about 59% mash efficiency. With the experience, though, I have a better idea of the efficiencies I can expect to achieve on the system, so future high gravity recipes will hopefully be more predictable. I’ll be kegging it in the next few days, with some dry hops.
• On 5 December, I brewed “Aspiration Ale,” a clone of the 90 Shilling Ale from Odell Brewing. I had been wanting a red ale of sorts, and this take will definitely be in that realm. It smelled amazing on the mash–I hope this bodes well for the final product! Incidentally, this is also the first brew on the Anvil Foundry where I felt like I had a good handle on the whole process from start to finish. Practice makes perfect! I hit 68% mash efficiency, right where I want to be for a no-sparge brew.

What’s On Tap?

• Stygimoloch Bock is drinking super nicely right now. It’s such an amazing fall/winter beer, and I’m pretty happy with the latest iteration of the recipe. I have a feeling that this keg won’t last very long.
• “See See IPA” just went on tap (an homage to the song “See See Rider”, and a bad pun on the two “C” hops–Chinook and Cascade–that I used in the dry hop phase). It’s a modified rebrew of the Wildfire IPA I did earlier this year, mostly just adjusting the hops varieties. The beer started fairly hazy, but dropped reasonably clear after a few days. The flavor is pretty great, too. It’s a classic “Old School” West Coast IPA. For this batch, the dry hops are floating loose in the keg, and I threw a hop screen on the intake tube for my ClearBeer draft setup.
• My session stout went on tap today, and is really, really nice. It’s beautifully clear, has robust malt character, and goes down pretty easy. It’s exactly what I want in a winter-season session beer, and the batch clocks in just shy of 3% abv by my calculations!

What’s Coming Up?

• This coming weekend, I’m doing a half-batch (~3 gallons) of a Houblon Chouffe clone. It is another high gravity recipe, but learning from my past experience I feel like I’ve got a better shot of hitting my targets on this version! The beer is a Belgian IPA, which is a fairly new style and one I don’t think I’ve ever done before. I have fond memories of drinking it on tap at a local Belgian beer taphouse (in the Before Times), so want to give a try for my own version.
• I have a fair bit of beer on-hand, and don’t really need to brew more. But, I need the relaxation that a Saturday morning brew provides. I think I’ll probably be doing some half-size batches, which scratch the itch and give me an opportunity to experiment a bit with reduced risk.

Other Notes

• I’ve cycled through base malts fairly quickly as of late, and had to restock from my local homebrew shop. They’ve been carrying some of the Viking malts lately, and I got a 2-row pale malt as well as a pilsner malt, just to try something different. I also snagged a sack of Crisp’s Maris Otter malt, so put in some English-style batches in the next few months.