still breathing; still brewing

It's been a while since I've posted anything but ratings and thought I might put together a bit of a review of what's going on in the brewing department.

I got started immediately once we finished moving into our new place with an Christmas inspired Old Ale I've named 'Oak to Joy'.  The beer was drawn up to be a fairly strong sipping beer for the cold winter months and partially aged in oak.  The thing took near a month to ferment out!  I was expecting to be sampling it by now and instead I'm waiting for it to mellow out before bottling.

A week later I set down a beer that I intend to age out for a few months.  The idea was to spike a classic Dunkelweizenbock with Brettanomyces bacteria.  This will develop a gamey, musty, cellar-like character that I think will balance well with the malty, smoky notes typical to the style.  The weizen yeast is all done fermenting and the brett should be munching away at the residual sugars for the next three months before I package it.

Last weekend I brewed up my fourth solo batch, a Biere de Garde.  This is one of the few traditional French styles of beer.  Hallmarks include a very slow ale fermentation at low temperatures and long term lagering that results in a smooth malty beer with a mild yeast and hop profile.  The White Labs French Ale yeast I used fermented the beer out in an astonishing four days!  I let it rest for four more and have started bringing it down to a lager temperature of 40F.  The beer will age there for four weeks and continue to mellow.

I'm currently building up a starter for another experimental batch, an all Brettanomyces Clausenii blonde table beer.  All brett beers require a lot of patience and a large yeast starter, so despite the fact that I began propagating yeast today, I won't be brewing for two weeks time.  I selected a very lightly colored, mild malt base with a small amount of slightly spicy hops to really let the yeast flavour shine through.

On top of all that I'm working on switching from bottling to kegging.  I'm debating between converting my own keg fridge or purchasing a commercial one.  The switch should make brewing a lot cleaner: bottling is the messiest and fussiest part by far.

That's where things stand!