In the grand tradition of next week plans that don't get completed, here's the schedule of beer things I want to do in the next couple of weeks:

• One medium-high gravity, well-bittered but not too hoppy pale ale, in an 8-10 gallon batch.
• a raspberry beer.
• a lager of some sort, or an Alt Bier

I could totally hit another alt bier. I remember thinking that beer was awesome. I'll more-or-less copy the last recipe that I used but change the mash schedule. It was a decoction, by the way, and I think I'll do that again.

I'm also seriously considering moving to 8 gallon batches.

Holy shit! In seventy-two hours this Imperial IPA achieved 72% attenuation. I'll have to rack on Thursday.

The Second Anniversary IPA had an explosive start. So explosive that there was a 4a.m trip to the brewery to set up a blow-off hose. There's yeast caked all over the top of the carboy.

That yeast, presently, is my problem. You see, it's all on the top and not in the beer and the fermentation has slowed to the point where I'm doubting that it's not going to stall. I'm about to run a test on it's present level of fermentation. Regardless of the results, I'll probably give the fermenter a good shake (it's all CO2 in there right now, so no worry about oxidation) to get some of the caked yeast back where I want it: in the beer.

In honor of two years of Nextweek Brewery, I made an Imperial IPA today. It was one of my favorite brew sessions in recent memory; I brewed outside, instead of in my brewery-room, which made it much less hot and gave me much mor space to work. In all, I thought it was quite pleasant.

The recipe was 16 lbs. cargill pale mat. I started the mash at 151. It dropped to 146 after thirty minutes, so I bumped it up to 156 for the rest of a 60 minute conversion rest. Then I mashed out to 166 and sparged.

I first wort hopped this beer with 1 oz. East Kent Goldings (4% AA), .5 oz Simcoe (11.9%) and .5 oz. Amarillo (8.9%). These were all pellets, and I used promash to calculate alpha acid degredation. Once the boil started, I added .65 oz. of Amarillo and .75 oz. Simcoe. That's it for kettle hops--I didn't do any aroma additions because I'm going to dry hop with an ounce each of goldings, amarillo and simcoe. I won't be dry hopping anything for awhile, because this beer is going to take awhile to reach terminal gravity and I don't want to leave it on the dry hops too long. (I'm playing with large dry hops additions for short time periods.) This calculates to 64 I.B.U in pro-mash; my experience is that my beers are much bitterer than the promash calculations would suggest, which I attribute to my high boil-off rate--today, for example, my boil began around a gravity of 66.

By the way, the final gravity was 1.089!

I fermented 2 quarts of 1.040 gravity wort with a vial of White Labs Dry English Ale yeast, which finished fermenting yesterday. I decanted it and pitched the slurry into my wort. It's already fermenting well. I just hope I don't need a blow off hose.

DMS sucks.

In other news, I've gotten shanks and faucets installed into my cooler. I'm awaiting handles. I'll post some pictures of what's going on soon.

I've got a two quart starter going over in the corner. That's for the imperial IPA that I'm brewing on Saturday.