A Flurry Of Activity

After a relatively quiet month, where I've managed to reduce my backlog of undrank (undrunken?) beers down to a single quart of each of my four remaining varieties (BB-3 Dark Epiphany Irish Stout, BB-4 Shaved Amadeus Vienna Lager, BB-5 New World Czech Pilsner and BB-6 Farty Monk Belgian Dubbel), I've decided to go out with a bang by getting the "assembly line" started up once again.

When we last left things, there were two fermenters currently full of beer: #1 has 2 gallons of my still-unnamed Christmas Stout (BB-7), which has been hard at work since May 5th; #2 has 2 gallons of Browncoat Ale (BB-9), which was brewed on June 10th and has been fermenting for just under 3 weeks.  Both of them are ready to come out and be bottled.

Meanwhile, my Blonde Ale, named "Nimblejack" (BB-8) has been bottled for 3 weeks, carbonating away nicely, and is more than ready to be moved into the nearly empty primary refrigeration unit to begin cold conditioning.  If this gets done today, it will be ready to be sampled just in time for the 4th of July celebrations.

To round things out, today was also the day I set about concocting my first true "experimental" beer.  Until now, everything has been based on either a stock recipe from Mr. Beer, or a modification to a stock recipe made (and tried) by other users.  But for my 10th batch of beer, I felt that it was time for me to branch out in a new direction.

So today, we're going to brew a Black Lager.

After doing a fair amount of online research, I settled on an archived recipe for Snow Drift Dark Lager as a starting point.  This recipe uses the High Country Canadian Draft HME (which is a base starter for a very large number of custom MrB recipes), but combines it with the Creamy Brown UME and Argentine Cascade Pellet Hops to make a Lager that weighs in at 4.6% ABV, with 24 SRM (dark) and 22 IBU (moderate bitterness).  Not bad, but not quite what I want.  My modification to this recipe is to replace the hops with US Goldings Pellet Hops, to use 50% more hops than the recipe calls for, and to add 1 oz of Sinamar to darken it significantly.  If my math is correct, I should end up with a "Hoppy" beer that has 5.9% ABV and 40 SRM, but maintaining a 22 IBU.  This will make it a Class 6 Black Lager.

The name, as had previously been revealed, will be "Ten If By Giant Robot".  The inspiration came from a t-shirt design I found on Threadless, with a terrified Paul Revere riding off to warn the good folk in Lexington and Concord about the manner by which the British were coming.  One if by land.  Two if by sea.  Ten if by giant robot.

[Late Evening Update]  I've brewed Giant Robot and have moved Nimblejack to begin cold conditioning.  Bottling of the Christmas Stout (Grolsch) and Browncoat (PET) will happen tomorrow.