Brief additional updates

I wanted to pin some other comments to my last update before I truck out to Austin.

I had some tasty beers at The Common Table in Dallas over the weekend. The Common Table has quickly risen in stature as one of my favorite Dallas spots for beer (along with Meddlesome Moth, Old Monk, Blackfriar and Gingerman). I managed to score a couple of the Lakewood beers. Really tasty beers. I had the Rock Rider, a rye/wheat beer, which I enjoyed because they let the rye shine through without washing out the rye flavor with hops like many rye beers. I also had Hop Trapp, their Belgian IPA. True to the Belgian IPA style, it was bigger on hop flavor and aroma than bitterness, so that was nice. It was probably a touch too light and could easily be classified as a Belgian pale ale but that doesn't have the hype of "IPA" these days. I'm excited to try Temptress, their imperial milk stout. So far, they are adding to the quality craft beer available in DFW (along with Peticolas).

I also tried the Adelbert's wit that we brought back from our last trip to Austin. We plan on visiting the brewery this Friday but figured it would be good to make sure we like the beer enough to dedicate a couple hours to their beers. It was a tasty wit but lacking slightly in body. Nonetheless I am trying to bottle harvest their yeast and plan to do the same to their biere de garde we also have. One thing I dislike: a 330cl bottle filed with only 11oz? Not even 11.2oz? A very strange amount of beer. The bottles are obviously designed to hold more. Not sure what that is about. Anyway, hopefully the wit yeast are still viable and I can spend labor day doing school work (unfortunately), preparing for the week and brewing a wit.

The spelt saison is looking and smelling great. Fermentation seems to have finished quickly and the beer has dropped bright. It smells delicious with nice rustic, Dupont-like character. Since I fermented it in the house in the upper 70s I want to send it outside these next few days in the mid-90s to make sure it fully attenuates out. If the wit yeast is viable and ready to be pitched on Labor Day I'll bottle the saison to make room for the wit and then the wit will move into the fermentor.

I'd like to finish a nice long post of something substantive but I am already behind schedule for the week and with the weekend dedicated to relaxation I need to get other things on track. So we'll see how efficient I am this week at getting all my work done first.