Wow...

I've fallen behind. In writing. Not brewing. No, I have been brewing.

Missing Shade of Brew, the Heffe Weizen, is in bottles. If the warm uncarbonated stuff tells me anything, I've created a lovely Heffe Weizen. This has me enthused about creating a Weizenbock, which is dark wheat beer with some the character of a bock--mostly the higher alcohol content. Missing shade was bottled last night, Sept. 26th. The final specific gravity was 1.014. I never got the original, which should have been 1.050.

The Tripel presents a great story. The wort had a specific gravity of 1.081--fucking potent stuff. The yeast predicatably took a bit of time to begin fermentation. Once it did, the kause rose so high that it was pushing through the airlock. The yeast clogged that up. When I came home the lid had blown off. It settled quite a bit over the next twenty-four hours. Hasn't blown off again since. That beer should be ready to transfer to secondary fermentation in two days--I say should because frankly fermentation is still pretty vigorous.

My second IPA is started. I pitched the yeast on the 25th. I used a different recipe, which is most notable for the use of a proper yeast from White Labs. I upped the malt content; original SG was 1.054. I use Northern Brewer's hops for bittering--2 oz. 7.1% Alpha acid; for flavor, 3/4 oz Cascade and for aroma 1/4 oz. of the same. I added the Cascade hops with nine minutes left in the sixty minute boil and the aroma with only a minute left. I should digress on the original IPA: I felt like it lacked hop flavor and aroma (not to mention body). That the reason for a later addition of flavor hops and aroma hops. I also worked a new cooling method: place the pot next to a hose spigot and turn on the spigot (keeping water out of the wort, of course.) This worked well. I'm told that using a proper yeast (English Ale Yeast) should enhance the hops flavor quite a bit.