Been a slow week

It's been a slow beer week for me. Only new consumptions of note were a few bottles at Chumleys, as I rush to finish my passport before my year is up (30 beers to go, November 9th is the deadline). This makes for interesting times since they won't mark passports on Thursday through Saturday. Basically I just flipped to a page and killed the beers on the page...unfortunately for my productivity I flipped to a belgian page. I killed Chimay Blue and Chimay White. Every Chimay I've had has been really good for the style. Their trippel isn't as good as Westmalle trippel, but it's infinitely more available.

Thursday I managed to kill the last keg of Amazon Princess at the Peoples tasting room. There are still a few kegs scattered around the greater Lafayette area, but they are the lone survivors...and God help them if I happen to be around that establishment. It was a great beer and will be greatly missed until next time.

The Pig of McLuckey ale carbonated in 2 days (have I mentioned that I friggin' love the pig?). This beer is so good. I'm really actually kind of angry that I have to give it all away. I like it so much that I'm actually moving the Zwier Ale back in my queue so that I can repeat the McLuckey ale for personal consumption. Both of my first 5 gallon batches have been primarily handed out (about half of Hop Scare was intended for the family 4th celebration). I feel I can pound out a second McLuck ale for myself and not fall behind too far. I will need a second secondary before I start my Christmas/Winter ale anyways. For batch 2 of the McLuck ale I'm going to get even a little more aggressive. I'm thinking of moving the first citra addition to 10 minutes left in the boil, adding the hallertau with 5 mins and dry hopping the other 1/4 oz of citra. This will make for something that's even a little more aggressive, and potentially even more aromatic.

The Zwier ale is going to be an Amarillo hop based American pale kit from Midwest, with the addition of citra hops in there somewhere. I'm still debating between using them as bittering or aroma hops. The amarillo is supposed to be the highlight of the flavor, but I'm such a huge fan of the citra hops as an aroma hop, and am intrigued by using them as a bittering hop.

At this rate, I'll be looking to go all grain before I can afford to...may have to start some really weird experiments next spring/summer.

-James