Brewing goals through the end of 2010

Before I get on topic, I have to say, you know what I really like about blogging? You can vomit your ideas into the internet now matter how inane, unqualified, or useless they are. That's mostly what the internet has become. A lot of inane, unqualified comments being thrown out one useless expression at a time. Twitter and facebook (and myspace and livejournal before that) really captured on this idea that people want to share their every thought with the world. However, there is a lot of great knowledge shared on the internet, and I'd like to think that most websites have figured out how to separate useful exchanges of ideas and inconsequential (and often inflamatory) blabbering. I'd also like to think that I've cut this blog down to interesting information, rather than self-gratifying nonsense. So the actual goal of this post is just to summarize what is to come for the rest of the year so that people can determine whether this is a useful exchange of information they would like to find.


Ok, so all that aside, here are my current brewing projects:

In the fermenter:

*Belgian Golden Strong Ale

Bottle Conditioning:

*Smoked bourbon peach porter
*Sour ale
*Hatch green chili blonde
*Lime blonde

In future posts I hope to remember to provide details on these recipes and how they turned out, provided they are not completely terrible.

I just purchased two corny kegs I plan to use as fermenters, along with my 7.9 gallon bucket and 4L glass jug. The only downside of using the kegs is that they are not good for any style that promotes ester production (e.g. Belgians and hefeweizens) because of the geometry of the container. However, I'm looking forward to being able to ferment multiple other styles in them.

My goals for the remainder of 2010:

*Belgian dubbel -- a recipe I designed
*Saison -- also of my design
*Scotch ale -- also mine
*AHS Live Oak Hefeweizen kit -- it's my favorite hefe, and I've yet to find a clone recipe (oddly enough, I know the brother of the brewer in charge of Live Oak's hefeweizen, but I can't seem to convince him to convince her to share the recipe)
*Left Hand Milk Stout clone
*Sour mash cherry kriek-style ale -- still being designed
*Smoked porter -- same recipe as the porter I have bottle conditioning, but without the peach or bourbon
*Belgian blonde -- still being designed
*Dunkelweizen -- not yet designed
*Another graff attempt -- not yet designed
EDIT: also adding a Gratzer-style ale and an oud bruin, although the oud bruin will probably happen next year.

I have a busy fall ahead of me (other than brewing) so this is a very aggressive schedule. Since some of these will be 1 gallon batches and most will be 3 gallon batches I should get through most, if not all of them, at least before it starts warming up next spring. The dubbel will definitely happen next month, and I hope to have the saison also fermenting by end of August.

Some of these beers, like the dubbel and the golden strong (currently fermenting) are big 10% beers, so they will condition likely into the winter, so I'll need to have some more sessionable stuff in the works (hence the saison and wheat beers).


(I haven't had a chance to put up any updates because I've been making these initial posts at work, and all my brewing notes, recipes and pics are on my laptop. I haven't had a chance to take my laptop somewhere I can get online (I currently lack access at home) where I can post up all the pics and recipes from beersmith.)