Thursdays are brew days on my current schedule, and there's always a Thursday fast approaching. I'm deciding between two beers I might do, a straw-colored blond ale and an old ale that's meant for the holidays of 2007.

The blond will follow a pilsner like grain bill and be fermented with Cali V Ale yeast from white labs. I will probably stick to noble hops for bittering and target around 25 IBU, with no aroma and only mild flavor hop additions, probably also with noble hops. The grain bill be be 8-9lbs. pils malt and 1/4-1/2 pound each carapils and wheat malt, mashed around 151 degrees.

The old ale will be a parade of crystal malts. I'm going to use several varieties from the whole color spectrum, probably around 2 lbs. total, in a 12lbs recipe (O.G. around 15 Plato.) I will also use about an ounce of black patent for clarity and to help dry the finish. I'm thinking 45-50 IBU. Small amounts of finishing hops, which won't be very noticable after 10 months in the bottle. I'm considering making this beer all Target hops. Fermented with dry english ale yeast.

The consdieration for the old ale is that I should make it soon if I want to to have time to age and all that before Thanksgiving. I have two beers that await kegging right now, so there's no special need to ferment a session beer like the blond now. On the other hand, I'm anticipating the blond slightly more, perhaps ony because I like the name "Platinum Ale", perhaps because I would actually get to see what it was like before, say, the next time I hear a Christmas carol.