The East Marginal Way South & South Spokane Street Fraternal Order of Wayward Brewers

Happy New Year! Well I've moved out of the house. Moved all me brewing equipment that is. I've gone in with a couple homies on a little brewing space down in Sodo/Georgetown. Lotsa room and brewing under cover rules. Haven't hit my full stride yet, I'm looking at getting up to brewing once a week, but getting back to brewing feels really good. Got a couple things under my belt; 5 gals. of Sierra Olympus (my SN Pale clone with Citra, Simcoe, and Amarillo - very good drinking indeed), 5 gals. of Belgian Bland (low gravity batch to prop up some of the Wyeast Westmalle strain), 10 gals. of botched IPA that is being served as a Northwest-style Bitter (actually pretty nice, lots of subtle hop character), 5 gals. of an ashy Foreign Export-style Stout using the Pacman yeast to prop up for 5 gals. of Infernal Libation (a Black Wine that I've been "planning" on brewing for about 2 years) that still has to package, 5 gals. of Czech Plz (a beer I've brewed a few times with various tweeks; this batch uses Sterling hops for the first time for me, still a bit green at this point but should come around), 5 gals. of an attempt at a Westmalle-style Tripel with a West Coast hop profile (I abhor the whole "Belgian IPA" affect and refuse to use that term) that is a few weeks shy of going into the keg, and freshly put up tonight: 5 gals. of Berliner Weisse. WAHA organized a lecture with Jess from Wyeast about that style of beer with a lot of great information. I'd brewed a Berliner Weisse before with stomach turning results (no boil, a week on Lacto, then pitched with yeast = ugly, sulphury mess) and have wanted to try it again. The Wyeast advice was to brew, pitch Lacto, and two days later pitch Sacchromyces to clean up. Still wanting to take advantage of a short boil, I chose dried malt extract instead of all-grain thinking that a lot of the sulphur compounds inherent in malted barley would have been driven off during the malt extract production process resulting in a cleaner wort. The wort after knock out and chilling was clean and bright tasting but we'll see after we get into the ferment. Otherwise, I'm looking forward to a lot more brewing; got a couple weddings this summer to brew for, need to fill Darrel, my home brew club North Seattle Brewers has a barrel project in the works, and with all the brewing gear out of the house there's finally room for a kegerator! Wheee!