Big Brew Week(end)

Alright, so I caught the bug to pump out some hoppy beers in the past 8 days. First I brewed an American brown ale based off of Tasty McDole's Janet's Brown recipe. I have brewed an American brown in the past that turned out very nicely, but it was much more malt focused. I still have a few bottles, so I am looking forward to a taste comparison to see whether a malt or hop oriented interpretation is favored. The brew process was the first time I had the malt ground at the LHBS, and my numbers were lower than expected, so I had to add some DME to the brewpot to get my gravity up to where I needed it. I had also never mash hopped before, and this was a theme of the course of the next few brews.

The next set of brews were 4 different IPAs. One was my Blind Circus IPA, brewed around last Thanksgiving and well recieved over Christmas.

The next I brewed was called Palm Reader IPA. This brew had the same exact grain bill as the Blind Circus, but the hops used were all different and one I have never used. These include Falconer's Flight and Falconer's 7C's in the mash and as 30 minutes additions, followed by Nelson Sauvin at flameout and dry hops.

The third brew was an IPA called Jumper with about 35% of the grain bill being malted wheat. I felt that wheat would help to enhance the fruity characteristics I was looking for from a heavy dose of Amarillo and Citra hops. The citra hops were hole leaf in this batch, so my utilization may be a little lower than hoped.

 The final IPA was close to the Jumper, but all the Citra I had were pellets this time. I also really wanted to go a bit closer to the edge, and use 100% Brettanomyces for the yeast, with 66% B. clausenii and 33% B. bruxelensis. I ran out of DME and didn't realize it, so I did not have a starter, but hoped that 3 vials would be enough. Fermentation was slow to start and took about 3.5 days before I started to see a krausen that only lasted about 30 hours. However, the gravity had only dropped by about 15 points at that time, and is still very slowly fermenting 10 days after production. It has tasting very interesting thus far, like a very fruity grapefruit just.

All of these beers will be dry hopped and bottle conditioned.