Summer Outlook

My imperial red, and the Wyeast 3522 starter

You all know how much I love looking ahead and planning when it comes to my brewing.  Hell, I even spent an entire semester in school reviewing commercial beers from the different BJCP style categories, all the while formulating recipes and thinking about what I would brew when I got the chance again.  Well, my first brew of the summer is nearly complete (Cicada Imperial Red baby!) and I thought I'd just do a quick mapping out of the rest of the summer as I see it right now.  Here is the plan:

Brew up my Belgian Table Beer tomorrow.  There is an amazingly lively starter on my stir plate right now, and I can't wait to unleash it on a batch of fresh wort.  It will be done really quickly and will be a great summer session beer.  The other important thing about this beer is that I will reuse the yeast cake from it to make my Père Noël de Bruxelles Belgian Christmas Ale.  Make all the jokes you want about Christmas in July, but this baby is topping out at around 8% ABV and I'm going to give it a few months to age to perfection (Cutts family and close friends, get excited for the holidays).

What I didn't mention about the Belgian Christmas Ale is that it will only be a half batch...and that it has an English brother, the Figgy Pudding Ale; a 9.2% ABV behemoth of a beer made with fresh figs, black treacle, and mulling spices.  Mmm...and both of these will be "oak aged," but more on that later.

Well with those exciting brews to look forward to, I figured that I'd want one more good one for while the weather is still warm, so with the help of some sneaky and speedy methods described by a recent issue of Zymurgy, I want to try to fit in a Berliner Weisse.

Oh, and definitely more cider.  ASAP.  Stuff was SO GOOD, SO EASY and gone SO FAST.