There’s not much to say for the past month, so let’s just jump into the beer!

Beer Batch Updates

• I kegged the orange wheat ale mentioned last time, and it’s now on tap! Such an incredibly delicious beer.
• My latest schwarzbier is kegged and lagering; it’s super nice in initial tastes! Even after only two weeks in the lagering chamber, the beer is now brilliantly clear.
• I brewed my 2021 edition of Alta California lager on 6 March 2021, and it’s currently fermenting along. I will start the cold crash in a day or two.
• I had put Pilsnerpeton (a German pils) on tap for a week or two, but swapped it out for the orange wheat ale. The pils wasn’t totally clear yet, and I thought a few more weeks of lagering would help with any latent haze. Similarly, I cycled my altbier back out from the keezer, with the English IPA taking its place. Again, I wanted to condition the altbier just a bit more. The IPA and porter kegs kicked in the last few days, so I was able to get the pils and altbier back on service. The extra wait was worth it!
• I brewed a Belgian quad this weekend, as part of a homebrew club barrel project. It was a super fun challenge to plan out such a high gravity brew on the Foundry, a setup that isn’t optimal for really big beers. I did a combination of frequent mash stirring, a long mash (2 hours!), and simple sparging to get it to the place I needed it to be. It was a loooong brew day, nearly 12 hours from start to finish, but fun as an experiment. I hit my numbers pretty closely, so I’m satisfied.

What’s On Tap?

• My orange summer wheat ale is fulfilling the “light beer” slot, and it’s quite drinkable!
• I just threw Pilsnerpeton back on…it’s super drinkable, as a moderately hoppy pale lager.
• The altbier is excellent! It’s a great recipe to start with, and the extended cold conditioning cycle paid off.

What’s Coming Up?

• I plan to do an IPA of some sort next weekend. I have some Simcoe and Centennial as well as the Samba hop blend, which seem like a good combination for an American IPA.
• I’ll make my Schell’s Pilsner clone again soon.

Other Notes

• My latest sauerkraut batch is now jarred up and ready to use. It turns out the 3 year old loves sauerkraut too, so we go through it at an unexpectedly rapid pace.
• I finished up the jar of preserved lemons, by turning some of it into chicken tagine (which was delicious), and the rest into a lemon-garlic salad dressing (also delicious). While our lemons are still in abundance, I plan to make another batch. As a short-cut, I’ve found that you can grill lemons low-and-slow on the top rack of the grill while cooking other things. They get an internal consistency very similar to preserved lemons, and a nice smoky flavor.