Graveyard Gose, a WoW Racial Beer

Ok....lets be honest--I have no idea what malts are in this.  I bought them months ago, and they have been in my freezer until I could get around to actually brewing it, since at the time I hadn't yet experimented with souring.  And in a computer crash I lost all of my Brewtarget data.

So...I'm going to make my best guess that it was intended to be a dark or black gose, and that I went off of the standard 40%/60% wheat/pilsner grain bill, before adding colour and specialty malts.  Total weight was 2.6 pounds.

Near 100% Wheat

I decided I wanted to see what a wheat beer really tastes like--with the BIAB system, you don't have to worry too much about stuck sparges.  So, I went with a grain bill which was almost entirely wheat, other than colour malts (sadly, chocolate wheat wasn't available), to make something like a weizenbock.

That /was/ the plan.  Then I thought about making it into a wit beer, with only a 15minute boil.
  Then a friend sent some wild Washington bolete mushrooms to me--and a day later, someone on a homebrewing group mentioned making a bier de garde with black chanterelles.  And the new idea was born.

Sour Saison, a 1 gallon Test

For quite a while, I have been wanting to make a sour saison, which is the more traditional form (either sour, or heavily hopped).  I actually want to do both, a dryhopped sour saison.  However, because I have a new yeast I wanted to play with, plus need to test the use of probiotic lacto in brewing, I decided to do a 1 gallon test first.  I originally meant to hop it to around 5 IBU, but forgot to grab my hops on brew day.  I figure I will let it ferment for a week or two, then either leave it plain, add berries, dry hops, or something else I haven't yet thought of, depending on the flavour.

The one gallon test batch is also to serve as a starter for the full batch of sour saison, since I am not pasteurizing the wort after souring. 

Radagast's Oud Bruin

Yup....three geeky beers made in two days...you are correct.

I've been wanting to make an oud bruin for quite some time, but the area I live in is decidedly deficient of mixed fermentation blends (dregs aren't really available either).  So when I saw a pack of Roeselares at the LHBS, I snapped it up and started planning.

The Gaffer's Home brew: a Hobbit Beer

If you haven't figured out by now that I'm a geek, and love fantasy novels, well....you're blind.  I spent quite a while thinking on this recipe, to attempt to get something similar to an ale brewed by the residents of the Shire.  As modified by Frodo and Bilbo's comments in the movie "Have you been getting into the Gaffer's homebrew?"  "Well, yes. But that's not the point.".  Which to me says that the Gaffer's brew is something special--either extra strong, or with extra herbs. 

Wizards Wit

A couple of months ago, I tried Anchorage Brewing's Whiteout Wit; it was delicious.  Bold lemon and spice, refreshing, and only a hint of any funk from the Brettanomyces the company used in it.  Flavoured with lemon peel, corriander, black pepper, and using Sorachi Ace hops (to further the lemony goodness).

Kedrigern's Best Brown, rebrew

One of my favourite brews I have made was the Kedrigern's brown--last time, I had a couple of issues...one of which was that it was only a 3 gallon batch, and therefore didn't last long enough.  The post for the original batch can be found here

So, this time I'm fixing that and brewing a full 6 gallons (in two batches, since my setup isn't made for more than 3.5).  I've made a couple of changes to the recipe, the most significant of which is the use of actual liquid yeast for the first time.  Plus, since I will be aging in a 5gal secondary for a few weeks, I plan to take one gallon and put it through a secondary with brettanomyces.

Should be 6.5 gallons in there, bubbling happily