The Cream Ale, brewed on March 14th, seems to almost be done fermenting. Bubbles in the airlock are very infrequent. Gravity reading showed 1.011. At this stage, it tastes quite different from the batch I was hoping to duplicate. It's slightly sweeter, with a touch of sulfer (will fade) and less hop bite at this point. It will hopefully turn out to be a great lawnmower beer in the next few weeks.
The bock has been lagering now for almost five weeks. Tapped it last night. Not quite at the appropriate carbonation level yet but the taste is pretty good. Really malty and smooth. Ellen enjoyed it so much that for the first time she said about a beer "I could drink this flat no problem." Good enough for me. I hadn't initially planned to, but I will be entering this into the national competition as well as the Longshot. I consider this to be the first successful lager that I've ever brewed.
Being busy at work these days has led me to ponder ideas on procrastination. I've settled on Denny Conn's Cheap 'n' Easy Batch Sparge Brewing to help me avoid what I'm supposed to be doing in the office. I figure that his batch sparge brewing has some nice advantages including being cheap (equipment cost minimal), taking less time than my current all grain brewing method, using less water (mandatory rationing coming this summer), getting better efficiency from the grains, and being much more of a mobile brewing method. I can't really fit a brewing sculpture into my teeny car to attend brew-ins... I'll be looking to pick up all parts in the next week or so and will have to give batch sparging a test run shortly after April 15th.
Cheers.
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