The day for ESB!

Brewing an old favorite, Trout Stream Ale. The first two times I brewed this, I actually drove out to Blue Springs CA, and brought home water from the spring house at the deserted farm there. While I no longer go to these extremes, its still a very tasty ale!
Grain bill

9.5 pounds Maris Otter
1 pound med crystal
1/2 pound light crystal
1/2 pound rolled barley.
1/2 pound Victory malt.
Mashed at 152 for 70 minutes
Hops bill
1 oz Northdown 60 min
1.3 oz EKG 30 min
.5 oz Fuggles 10 min
Will dry hop with an ounce of EKG
Used Wyeast 1968 yeast.
Full krausen the next day (20 hours later)

Strawberry mel

Racked, stabilized with potassium sorbate. Next week I'll back sweeten. Bought mesquite honey for this, am now thinking I need to get orange blossom to do this.
Its the 30th of August, back sweetening this with 1.5 pounds of Mesquite honey tonight. Hopefully, I'll be able to bottle in October!

Oaty Oatmeal Stout

Not much to do this afternoon, so I'm finally getting around to brewing an oatmeal stout with nothing but oats.
About 9 pounds of oatmalt
1.5 pounds of toasted (dark) oat grits and a pound of oatmeal
mash at 154 fo an hour
2 oz of Fuggles hops 60 minutes
fermented on yeast cake from the ABA (which I'm kegging today)
This one failed. Apperently, I don't know how to roast grain, as I got no color extraction. Not sure how much sugar is avaible in malted oats, but the 8 pounds I added yeilded a 1020 wort, after boiling down to 5 gallons, it might have approached 1025, hardly enough to bother with. Live and learn, barley has been the main brewing grain for good reasons!

Deep Forest Ale

After sipping on this for a few weeks, I decided it was a bit "sweet" and or lacking. So, today, the 13th of August, I added Wyeast 5151 Brettanomyces claussenii, which is an English strain of Brett. This should dry it out a bit, and lend a slight brett characteristic to the ale. Will know how it does in a month or two!

Multifruit Mel

Sitting with 3 gallons of straight cranberry blossom mead still clearing and a freezer full of fruit, I decided to combine the two. The first fruit addition will be 5 pounds of motecello cherries (tart pie cherries). These will go in tonight. Then some red raspberries, followed by blackberries, then the black raspberries. I plan to rack between each fruit addition so that I can judge how much of each needs added. It should end up as a complex fruit filled mead.
Its Friday the 13th, I added 2 pounds of blackberries and am thawing out a couple more pounds of blackberries and about 5 pounds of red raspberries to add tomorrow.
Added 3 1/4 pounds of red raspberries and another 2 1/2 pounds of blackberries on August 14th. Later this day, I added 2 pounds of black raspberries. This is going to be good!!!!
August 22nd. I added 2 pounds of peach blossom honey, one quart each of Trader Joes Just Blueberry juice, Hortex Black Currant nectar and Fructal Strawberry nectar. This should be done, unless after a month I decide a little more black raspberry is needed. I then topped off to five gallons with Black raspberry blossom mead (one gallon) and part of a bottle of sunflower blossom mead. Like I have previously noted, this will be GOOD!

They say 103 today

That doesn't slow me down, brewing an American Brown Ale today.

Malt bill
10 pounds of 2 row
.5 lbs. of crystal 65
.5 lbs of chocolate malt
.25 lbs. of Victory malt
.25 lbs. of dark wheat malt

Hop bill
.5 oz. Chinook 60 minutes
1.5 oz Cascade 15 minutes
2 0z. Cascade 0 minutes

US-05 Yeast