New brews?

Well, it's summer. I've just returned from England a little over a week ago. I should do a huge post on the beer I drank there. I have notes on paper...

After close to five weeks off, it's time to make some beer. I have too many yeasts in stock and am not sure where to start. I need a couple of session beers for kegging--British style things or U.S. pales and IPA's. I am way overdue to bang out a barley wine and a DIPA. I also have Belgian yeasts to use--Farmhouse, 3787, and Ardennes for starters. Plus lambic and Roeslare packs. Sheesh.

The Farmhouse will produce two saisons, a relatively slender little hoppy Saison and, later in the summer, a big over-blown honey Saison, loosely in the manner of Dupont's Biere du Miel. Ardennes was acquired specifically to do a big hoppy IPA Tripel fusion thingy, but I'm inclined to do a littler beer to get it going--not sure what yet. 3787 is a standby of mine with which I've made great singels (had one last night), great dubbels, and very Westmalle-esque tripels. Since those Saisons are all pale, I'm inclined to maybe take this year's pack of 3787 somewhere different.

In case it helps, I'm going to drink a Rochefort 6 from my stash. I tried a Rochefort cloning project, but had real issues with 1762, their supposed yeast--it doesn't attenuate enough for me. The 6 is sooo soft, with a delicate spiciness to the nose.

Perhaps one solution to my dearth of dark beers and my tendency to do 3 or 4 pale Belgians for every 1 dark one would be to craft a medium gravity darker beer to be fermented either by 3787 or Ardennes in lieu of a singel or Belgian pale. I could target 1072 or so (what this beer is) , incorporating plenty of a liquid candi sugar or the "soft" candi sugar and one good crystal (Special B or a Caramunich). Very simple. Bittering hops only. Perle or Northern Brewer to a very delicate number of IBU's. Seems like that couldn't go far wrong...