The second anniversary of the Next Week Brewery is Sept. 1. That's not tomorrow, but I've started to think about what to brew that Saturday.

A Russian Imperial Stout. 10 pounds Marris Otter and x pounds Cargill pale malt, one pound each brown malt, 80L crystal, 20L crystal, and British roast barley. 1/4 pound black patent malt. Bittered with columbus, warrior, or magnum, with an ounce of cascade at 20 and 1 minute. 70 IBU. Here, x = as many pounds as needed to get 1.100 OG. Mashed for attenuation 10 minutes at 130, 30 minutes at 145, 30 mintues at 155 and mashed out at 167.

A belgian dark strong ale. 13 pounds pils malt, 1/3 pound each caravienna, caramunich and special B. I'm going to follow Mosher's instructions for homemade invert syrup and use one pound, plus a pound of white corn sugar. Noble hops or Styrian Goldings (are those noble?) to 28 IBU. O.G. 85--I might have to adjust the sugar or pils malt to get that right. Mashed for 10 minutes at 130, 20 minutes at 145 and 40 minutes at 155, and mashed out at 167. Trappist ale yeast from White Labs.

An imperial IPA. 15.5 pounds cargill two row, mashed for 10 at 130, 20 at 145, 40 at 155 and mashed out at 167. O.G. 80. The tentative hops schedule, depending on results with FWH in my next few brews, is half an ounce of simcoe, half an ounce of amarillo and one ounce of goldings FWH. I'm going to dry hop it with a blend that's equal parts goldings, simcoe and amarillo, with one ounce of the blend for seven days, one ounce for five and once ounce for just three days. Fermented with white labs dry english ale yeast. Bittering hops: amarillo and simcoe to reach 70 IBU.

After a morning's hard work in the brewery I had collected 7 gallons of wort and about 380 gravity units of sugar, just the amount that I wanted. I ran up to my local home brew store to shoot the shit with the guy directing the all grain class--he only comes in for the class and he knows his shit and loves to talk beer. Around noon I was back in the brewery and ready to get the kettle full and boiling.

I don't know what happened. It just slipped. 5 gallons of wort crashed to the ground just as I was getting ready to pour it into my kettle.

That's a bit of an exaggeration. As a matter of fact, there was still about a gallon in the bucket when I grabbed it from the floor.

After cleaning and alleviating the shock, I decided to attempt a recovery. I went back to my local home brew store, grabbed some crystal and victory malts to steep in a little water. I dosed the remainder of the mornings mash with an ounce of goldings. Once the steeping was finsihed, I put the hopped runnings and the extract into the kettle and boiled it, adding half an ounce of simcoe for 60 and an ounce of goldings for one.

What was going to be a yeast experiment has become an FWH experiment. We'll see just what sort of hop flavor this generates, and whether it contributes much bitterness. I calculated the IBUs contributed by the simcoe at only 21. The upper bound of utilization of the goldings is calculated to be 12. If this beer (O.G. 53) balances slightly bitter or neutral, I think that means that I got fairly high utilization of the alpha acids from the FWH. If it balances in the other direction, then the utilization was lower. Of course, given the unorthodox FWH proceedure, I'm not sure how much weight to give this little data point.

I'm brewing ten gallons of pale ale tomorrow. Here's the recipe:

• 10 lbs. Maris Otter Malt
• 4 lbs. Cargill two row
• 1/2 lb. each Paul's 10-20L, Cargill 30L and Munton's 60L crystal
• 2oz. Simcoe hops @ 11%AA
• 2oz. Goldings hops @ 4%AA
• 3 lb. Briess Pale DME
• Safale US Ale Yeast (2 pkgs.)

Begin by mashing the grains with 5 gallons water for 30 minutes at 145; raise to 155 and rest for 30 mintues; mash-out at 167. Sparge to collect 385 gravity units from the mash--should be about seven total gallons. Add the runnings to the boil kettle, add malt extact. Bring the wort to a boil and add 1 oz. of simcoe hops for a 60 minute boil. With 30 minutes remaining, add one ounce of goldings and half an ounce of simcoe. With one minute remaining, add half an ounce of simcoe and one ounce goldings. Chill wort and split between two fermenters, topping each off with water to get five gallons. This should give two batches of wort with a gravity of 52. Pitch each.

By fermenting one in the cooler and the other at room temperature, I'm going to see what the difference between fermenting at around 80 and at 67 is.

Goddamnit, I just want to brew every fucking day. I am good at this, and in a dream world, I would spend everyday making beer in a super small (i.e. homebrew) sized batch brewery, that was efficient and easy to clean and work it. All the muss and fuss would be taken out, leaving me to craft a new beer almost every day. In an ideal world, there would be a small tap room attached, where the beers would be served to a crowd of excited and loyal patron. The tap room and the brewery would not make money. Instead, it would be a place for beer lovers to congregate for examination of my latest creations.

I love the idea of pricing based on quality. (I'm not imagining this operation to make any money.) The deal is that all good and excellent pints are three dollars; strong ales will be served in half pints for two. If the beer is less than good, it's cost is reduced, and we thank the customer that helps us remove our bad stock, by offering 1.50 okay drafts. Spoiled beers will retail of $.01 a pint, until the end of the night we find it's spoiled, when we throw it out to make room for something good.

Right now my pale ale is fermenting away in the cooler that I usually reserve for kegs. Having no full kegs, it seems to me that the time is ripe for fermenting. Once that beer is ready, I want to brew another, but to ferment it, I need a cool space. The solution, naturally, is to ferment the beer in the cooler with the ale that I'm serving: ale serving temperatures are lager fermenting temperatures. I haven't decided yet what the lager will be.

It's motherfuckinghothere. The two thoughts that naturally come to mind are california common ale and a pilsner. The pils would be pretty oridnary: noble hops to bitter, dry hopped during the last week of conditioning, pils malt (9lbs) and carapils (1/2 lb). I might do something with this to emulate decoction effects, but I won't do a proper decoction. No, this would be SIMRed with a brief protein rest and then a 30-30 conversion at 145 and 155. One option for decoction effect is just to replace a small portion of the pils malt with munich. That will boost malt character and be easy as hell. Another thing that I'd considered is taking half a gallon of the first runnings and boiling it for 15-20 minutes--until it was significantly reduced, and, presumably, darkened. I might try that.

But I might not even make a pilsner. The California Common would make a nice summer beer, right? The recipe would probably be maris otter (around 9 pounds) and 6 oz. each 80L and 40L crystal. I might use some american 2-row malt in place of the maris otter. I might also do something weird, like add flaked barley. Domestic Northern Brewer hops, only to about 20-25 IBU, with a flavor addition at thirty minutes and then a small addition of bittering hops just to get the desired IBU level.

My efficiency yesterday blew so badly that I think I may have weighed out less malt than I thought. Anyway, I actually dumped a pound of malt extract in to get it up a few points. This let me hit a gravity of 54.3--14.0 Brix, whatever that works out to be. Of course, given that this was my first SIMRing, that may play an explanatory role. I'm worried that conversion never completed or something, but there's litte to be done about that now.

The grain to water ratio made a pretty thin mash. Could I have fucked up that measurement to the point that it made the mash inefficient? I used my old Phil's Lauter Tun set up to SIMR, and I usually use my keggle.

I'm going to go run a test real quick and I'll be right back.

--back--

Well, the test was to examine the amount of deadspace in the false bottom of my keggle. There was some hypothesis I had which required that the keggle deadspace be fairly large. It is not. In fact, it is smaller than I though--less than a quart.

I have a sudden and strong conviction that I should have mashed longer. I have this sudden worry that I'm mistaken to think that a short 15 minute rest in the 145 range is adequate because gelatinization won't occur until late enough in that stage that it really can't serve as an adequate beta-amylase rest. I think I will try my next beer for 30 minutes in each range because it seems like an easy data point to work with. Of course, given that my next beer will be a lager, I'm not sure how much I should really infer from the results.

Maybe I will do three beers in a row with 30-30 two-stage conversion rests. That would give me a much better basis to work from. After that I could move in either direction for the first rest and see what result I get.

I had another hobgoblin ale the other day. Palate effects are weird. There is a distinct taste of black patent malt in that beer, which gives it a much more brown ale like flavor than I had originally recognized.

Today, I'm SIMRing for the first time. So far, so good. There are kinks in the system that need to be worked out. For one, there's an issue of burner space for water (brewing liquor and sparge water) and the SIMR too. I think next time I will heat the water for the dough-in in a pot and then heat the SIMR for the next step. Alternatively, I could nearly heat for the dough-in, heat the simr and then get the water to strike temperature using the SIMR. The advantage of that comes largely in temperature control, the disadvantage is in time.

SIMRing is a little more intense than regular-old brewing, as the SIMR demands attention, as does step mashing.

Today's brew is all goldings hops with a grist of nine pound maris otter and a half pound each of victory, 30L Cargill crystal and melanoidin. Hops: 2oz at 60, 1oz at 30, 1 oz at one. Fermented with dry english ale yeast from white labs at a cool 67 degrees.