Roeselare

We recently brewed a nice little Flemish brown/red guy with the Wyeast seasonal "roeselare" yeast. Should take a couple years to ferment. Will add Lambic yeast in secondary, along with oak chips. I'm at work and extremely bored. Supposed to be doing 'self training'. About to say something on the Chesterfield Wizards blog.

I recently acquired a book called 'Brew Ware: How to Find, Build & Adapt Homebrewing Crap'. Since I'm not currently able to upgrade to a 10 gal brewpot (funds go towards a new computer), I'll have to get crafty with my 8 gal in order to stay on top of the game. The coolest thing I found so far (maybe a picture or scan is on the way) is a method of cooling fermenting beer by putting a wet t-shirt over the carboy that is sitting in a tub of water and blasting it with a fan. The evaporation cools the beer-- I don't know how cool exactly but it could be a real boon to summer brewing, especially when the temperature gets into the 100s. All of the illustrations were made by the distinguished Randy Mosher, who penned one of my favorite brewing manuals of all time, 'Radical Brewing'.

We currently have a sack of Pils base malt, Munich, a pound of cascade hops and a pound of goldings. I'm thinking some sort of munichy IPA in the near future. I've often tasted a fair amount of munich in Russian River IPAs, especially Pliny the Elder. Its that sort of yellow/orange malt tinge that is less distinctly bready than a biscut or crystal malt, but with much more aroma than a 2-row. I'll probably go with just the standard American Ale yeast, making a run of maybe two beers. Maybe its about time to do another barleywine/small beer combo batch. I recall our last small beer was exquisitely drinkable-- perhaps a little too heavy on the citrusy hops. The more subdued English Goldings should work amazingly.

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-Naif out