Another weekend down the drain

[GPP33]

Since not much lasted from my last double brew day I'm going to have another go at it. This time it's going to be a Hoppy Wheat (shooting for something close to 80 acre) and a Saison which I'm hoping will be funky and fun (and of course delicious). If I can get my wife's POS subaru back together before the weekend I might even fire up an IPA as well.

Sunday will probably be the big day if anyone wants to stop by for a brew and BS.

[cheftyler]

I like both of those flavor profiles, good luck!

[GPP33]

I tapped both of the above mentioned beers last weekend, both turned out mighty tasty if I may say.

[GPP33]

Well the Hoppy Wheat is long gone and the Saison doesn't have much left. The Saison changed over time (smoothed out) as expected but the Hoppy Wheat blew me away. It started off closer to a session IPA with a little wheat (good but not what I planned), after a couple weeks in the keg and a week of vacation where it just sat it went from a super cloudy very hoppy beer to a crystal clear wheat with just a touch of hops, (exactly what I had planned).

Anyway, with those kegs drained I'm gonna need to get started on my next batches. A friend of a friend has a bunch of hops growing in his backyard so we're gonna do a 10 gal Centennial/Maris Otter American pale ale smash, I really wanted to pick hops on Friday and do a fresh hop on Saturday but the timing just isn't gonna work out so we'll use some that he picked last week and dried. Still fresh I guess, just not wet. This will be my first whole leaf brew with hops of an unknown alpha content so we'll see how it goes, at the end of the day it'll be beer though. We'll also knock out another 10 gal of a Hefe since the one we brewed on Mothers day weekend was a hit.

[GPP33]

Brew day was a success. I figured out that a 12 gal boil is my limit though, made quite the mess when 13 gal started boiling. The home grown hops worked well, the beer came out of the boil kettle surprisingly clear. The OG sample tasted like there was plenty of IBUs, maybe even a little high for a APA, might turn out closer to a low abv IPA. The Hefe went crazy for the first 24 hours and the temp shot up to above 80, got it in a water bath and slowly cooled it back down. Now I just have to be patient, I hate this part....