What should I brew next?

I've been brewing since May and am now doing all-grain. I'm still a n00b but having a load of fun. I wanted to challenge myself to do something new now that they days are getting shorter and it's hitting freezing temperatures at night.

Here's a list of what I've brewed so far in these 6 short months.

http://untappd.com/papertigerbrewery/beer

Beers with 0 check-ins are ones that I am kegging today. I use this to keep track of what I brew a bit more easier than just looking at my brewing recipe application.

2 Saisons
2 Stouts
1 Porter
4+ IPAs
1 Baryleywine
3 Hefeweizens
1 Berliner Weisse (still fermenting for kegging in January)

I LOVE IPAs particularly NZ hops with tropical fruit characters (Galaxy / Riwaka). I love coffee stouts with hints of oak and bourbon characters and I love sours.

So, I'm about to keg 5 beers and will have 5 fermentation chambers freed up for the next round of beers. Am thinking about doing 2 long term aging beers (3-9 months) and 1 sour (18+ months) and then 2 standard drinkable winter beers like a porter or a stout.

Would love feedback from you experts since I'm building my grain order this week and looking to brew 5 batches over the next 2 weeks.

Thanks guys and happy Columbus Day!!!



PS: Here's a view of my 6 fermenting beers in the cellar. 30 gallons of beer makes me a happy man but looking to push myself a bit more this season.

All of this since May?!?!? Wow, you are the definition of prolific! I think I've brewed six batched since May . . . of course, I'm now out of beer.

How about a nice Scottish ale, either a lighter version or a Wee Heavy? Or maybe a nice hoppy American Amber?

Wow, you have been busy but I have one question: Of all these beers you brewed have you actually tasted any of them to evaluate how you are doing? If not, my very humble suggestion would be to slow down, get some conditioned and begin tasting them to see how you are doing. After all, if they all taste like crap, do you really want to continue brewing crap beers before figuring out why that happened?

BTW, how warm is that closet? That's 30 gallons of potentially off flavored beer.............

With all that great beer in there. Brew something that will age for 5 years then you can drink what you got going now.

duboman said:

Wow, you have been busy but I have one question: Of all these beers you brewed have you actually tasted any of them to evaluate how you are doing? If not, my very humble suggestion would be to slow down, get some conditioned and begin tasting them to see how you are doing. After all, if they all taste like crap, do you really want to continue brewing crap beers before figuring out why that happened?

BTW, how warm is that closet? That's 30 gallons of potentially off flavored beer.............

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It's a fair question. I'll try to give a good answer. Many of my friends brew and some are professional brewers. I've been researching home brewing for 12 months prior to brewing my first batch..lurking here, reading many books and helping batches and cleanups at local breweries.

Most of my beer goes to friends, trading partners (I trade commercial beers as well) and to tastings that I attend weekly so I keg all of my beers, bottle half of the using my Blichmann beer gun from the keg and drink the rest at home with friends. I have a 4-tap kegerator.

The cellar is temperature controlled. It is a constant 62 degrees year round. I can make it 55 to 70 if I want to but I usually keep it 60-62 which is what is best for my Lambic beers and Stouts (Cantillon, 3 Fonteinen, Tilquin and Stouts like Bourbon County, dark lord, etc).

I've raised the temp a bit for beers I need to finish off. I also move carboys around. One room is a constant 68 and another currently is at 60 (my cabin has varying levels of insulation and draftiness in various parts of the house) The closet I have has it's own AC unit that I can control the temp in.

As far as tasting, I actually did bottle my barleywine and stouts. I've cracked open a few and they're developing nicely. There is some tweaking for the next batch of those but decided to wait 6 months before brewing those again so I can see how they develop.

I get nice feedback like this via Untappd - http://untappd.com/beer/212308.

I am a huge fan of certain hops so I've been experimenting with single-hop IPAs before I start doing IPAs that are combinations of different hops. Drinking my 10.5% Galaxy IPA tonight that was kegged 26 days ago. It's still drinking great but I'll need to tone down the ABV just a bit when I do it again. There's just a tad too much sweetness / matliness from this one.

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so, to answer your question, I drink beer nightly, review commercial beers, attend festivals, tastings and regularly send swing-top growlers of my beer all over the place. From 5PM to 11PM daily..beer is pretty much all I do. So, yeah slowing down I'm not going to do that but I do taste all of my beers and have had an awesome time brewing all of these, drinking them and sharing them.

I probably have 50, 1-litre swing-tops of my beer cellaring and a few hundred commercial cellarable beers..6 fermenting carboys, 2 kegs of beer that are aging a bit and 3 beers currently on tap. It's pretty much ALL I do is beer.

I hope that answers the question. My tone here isn't defensive. I really LOVE this hobby so I think your question is valid but I am very obsessive over every thing I do so try to research as much as possible but with no other hobbies or kids or social life...well, I have a LOT of spare time.

Pappers_ said:

All of this since May?!?!? Wow, you are the definition of prolific! I think I've brewed six batched since May . . . of course, I'm now out of beer.

How about a nice Scottish ale, either a lighter version or a Wee Heavy? Or maybe a nice hoppy American Amber?

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I'm not a fan of Scottish Ales. Have had a few Innis & Gun scotch ales and Alesmith's "Wee Heavy" and they're okay but not a favorite.

Am Amber ale would be a lot of fun. A friend brewed an AMber Ale, added Chinook and Simcoe and a healthy dose of Maple Syrup (easy to get up here) a few weeks after racking to primary and then kegged. It was delicious!

Have you brewed an Amber you liked? It would be cool to see what recipe you used if you don't mind.

adamjackson said:

It's a fair question. I'll try to give a good answer. Many of my friends brew and some are professional brewers. I've been researching home brewing for 12 months prior to brewing my first batch..lurking here, reading many books and helping batches and cleanups at local breweries.

Most of my beer goes to friends, trading partners (I trade commercial beers as well) and to tastings that I attend weekly so I keg all of my beers, bottle half of the using my Blichmann beer gun from the keg and drink the rest at home with friends. I have a 4-tap kegerator.

The cellar is temperature controlled. It is a constant 62 degrees year round. I can make it 55 to 70 if I want to but I usually keep it 60-62 which is what is best for my Lambic beers and Stouts (Cantillon, 3 Fonteinen, Tilquin and Stouts like Bourbon County, dark lord, etc).

I've raised the temp a bit for beers I need to finish off. I also move carboys around. One room is a constant 68 and another currently is at 60 (my cabin has varying levels of insulation and draftiness in various parts of the house) The closet I have has it's own AC unit that I can control the temp in.

As far as tasting, I actually did bottle my barleywine and stouts. I've cracked open a few and they're developing nicely. There is some tweaking for the next batch of those but decided to wait 6 months before brewing those again so I can see how they develop.

I get nice feedback like this via Untappd - http://untappd.com/beer/212308.

I am a huge fan of certain hops so I've been experimenting with single-hop IPAs before I start doing IPAs that are combinations of different hops. Drinking my 10.5% Galaxy IPA tonight that was kegged 26 days ago. It's still drinking great but I'll need to tone down the ABV just a bit when I do it again. There's just a tad too much sweetness / matliness from this one.

-----

so, to answer your question, I drink beer nightly, review commercial beers, attend festivals, tastings and regularly send swing-top growlers of my beer all over the place. From 5PM to 11PM daily..beer is pretty much all I do. So, yeah slowing down I'm not going to do that but I do taste all of my beers and have had an awesome time brewing all of these, drinking them and sharing them.

I probably have 50, 1-litre swing-tops of my beer cellaring and a few hundred commercial cellarable beers..6 fermenting carboys, 2 kegs of beer that are aging a bit and 3 beers currently on tap. It's pretty much ALL I do is beer.

I hope that answers the question. My tone here isn't defensive. I really LOVE this hobby so I think your question is valid but I am very obsessive over every thing I do so try to research as much as possible but with no other hobbies or kids or social life...well, I have a LOT of spare time.

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Very cool and no worries! Keep at it and keep rocking! I wish i had that time to brew all that beer

I've read and responded to so many posts from people who get started and keep dropping money on brewing and don't stop to figure out what they are doing wrong it was a basic assumption on my part.

duboman said:

Very cool and no worries! Keep at it and keep rocking! I wish i had that time to brew all that beer

I've read and responded to so many posts from people who get started and keep dropping money on brewing and don't stop to figure out what they are doing wrong it was a basic assumption on my part.

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Thanks! Yeah, I've made a LOT of mistakes. I've done a few "Thanks HBT" threads here because I've been half-way in to a screw-up and there's always a thread from way back or someone responds to me quickly answering a question I couldn't find via Google.

I do love this community for sure. So, not saying I'm not making mistakes now but I try my very best to avoid those as much as possible.

I appreciate the response. Hoping guys like you will keep taking the time to keep me from wasting $$$ wherever possible

Brew an old ale!

I recently bottled my version of the 11-11-11 old ale that is floating around here. Turned out great. Maybe split the batch and do half with brett in secondary? Kind of wish I had done that but I ended up keeping it all clean.

Another option would be a hoppy saison with brett in secondary. I did one a while back and dry hopped the crap out of it with citra. Turned out great. It was nice as a fresh hoppy funky saison and will be interesting to see how the brett reacts to aging in the bottles as time goes on.

My two cents...

weaksauce said:

Brew an old ale!

I recently bottled my version of the 11-11-11 old ale that is floating around here. Turned out great. Maybe split the batch and do half with brett in secondary? Kind of wish I had done that but I ended up keeping it all clean.

Another option would be a hoppy saison with brett in secondary. I did one a while back and dry hopped the crap out of it with citra. Turned out great. It was nice as a fresh hoppy funky saison and will be interesting to see how the brett reacts to aging in the bottles as time goes on.

My two cents...

Click to expand...

Thanks!

I have this up next that a buddy on RateBeer told me was incredibly easy and fun to make:



I have it down as All-Grain because I was going to find the conversion for all-grain on this. For now, it's a Single Hop extract beer fermented solely with Brett. Thoughts?

I'm a huge fan of Hair of The Dog Fred & Adam. Was thinking of a clone for those next.

Pick up a copy of brewing classic styles. Every time I try to think of something to brew, I'll flip through BCS and all the recipes are top notch. If you brew one and like it, you can use it as a base and modify it for future brews.