ALE 1: IRA (India Red Ale) - an amber variant of the proprietor's pale-ale recipe
bottling Thu 1/14	Very encouraging first sample! Dark and thick but not painfully so; Brian preferred it to his recipe. I added six peppercorns to the 1-liter bottle at home - it was already carbonating!
first taste Thu 1/28	Not ready for my b-day, but much smoother for the Super Bowl.
later Sun 4/4	Closing ceremony at Easter dinner. All spoke well of it, from Dennis to Michelle. An hour later, VW ale was previewed.
ALE 2: VW (Vienna Wheat) - An off-the-cuff Octoberfest knockoff, using ale yeast instead of lager. Less dark and bitter than IRA.
brewing Sat 3/13	Added more Tettnanger since the AA% was low. The two hops smelled distinctly different.
bottling Fri 3/26	A head-cold left me tasteless (even the bock was mild!), but others assured me I'd like it. All I detected was the sulfuric aroma from the yeast -- but I loved the color!
first taste Sun 4/4	Soon after the IRA was disposed of at Easter, the VW was poured. Still pretty, and the aroma had cleared. A nice, subdued flavor compared to IRA, and definitely less hoppy.
later	This stuff is GREAT!! It compares favorably to for-profit beers - gentle carbonation, moderate color and clarity, great balance, and flat-out yummy. Other than a tad more bitterness this will be hard to improve on.
	Well received at Larry's 50th and at two after-work events.
Sat 7/24	Closing event at Scout Lake. Highly reviewed throughout its career, its fame now carried by batch five.
ALE 3: Willamette ESB, aka Waldo Gold - A spontaneous brew that took advantage of Tom's interest and a free kitchen!
brewing Wed 4/7	Comparing my cereal-grain blonde wort to Tom's ball o' tar was shocking. Can these both be ales??
bottling Fri 4/23	Another odd-smelling brew, much lighter color than expected at the time. After exhaling, it also proved to be a non-bitter brew, so ESB was discarded in favor of Waldo Gold label.
first taste Sat 5/1	After ~10 days the odor was gone, leaving a gentle flavor to go with the lighter color. Marcia proclaimed it her birthday beer, so it's time to make another batch!
later	Another winner as tested at Taylor's b-day party. Tom's bock also much enjoyed.
Sat 6/26	Well received and greatly praised at Marcia's party! The peppercorn version drew special comments from nearly everyone who tried it - two dozen per liter is a good, round number.
Sat 7/24	Closing event at Scout Lake. A very good brew!
ALE 4: Ivy Bush ale (Bitter Smoke) - Use the smoky peat grain, and make the bitter that Ale 3 failed to be. A good Middle-Earth brew?
brewing Fri 5/14	All goes smoothly yet indecisively; I finally settle on Cal yeast as originally planned. That grain is smoky!! Some Fuggles were held back for dry-hopping, will be added in one week. Hydrometer reading 1.057.
bottling Fri 5/28	God what a mess. Bad valve, overfilled bottles, a nudged spigot lead to splatters and puddles. The final hydro reading leads to exactly 6% beer. Somewhat stinky yeast now smells familiar.
first taste Sun 6/6	DAMN that's tasty!! I'm sure glad some of the VW ale remains to be compared; I thought it was mighty good once. This will make the Scout Lake trip worth the drive! And this stuff is only one week old!!!!!
later	The smoked grain produces a bite similar to stout, but much softer. The overall effect is, once again, a malty beer with great balance but no overt hoppiness. I'll get it right when the Nugget hops are ready!
Sat 6/26	Also well thought of at Marcia's party, this will be the guest star at Scout Lake.
Sat 7/24	Everyone is clamoring for the peppercorn version, but this batch didn't have one. Still receives high praise, though.
ALE 5: VW Turbo Smoke - Born to hop, the IBU of ~75 conforms to John Barleycorn's Pied Piper Pale. Still a touch of smoke, and other ingredients intended to approximate the VW ale. Also a test of the Nugget / Tettnanger team.
brewing Wed 6/30	oops - tossed in a LOT of Nugget, leaving ~½ oz. for the second toss. Waited to 20min before adding the rest, then the Tettnanger on schedule. We shall see! Sure looks dark for a pale ale, though. By picking up the tab on Tom's kettle I earned a glass! Hoppy 6th lunaversary!
bottling Tue 7/13	Sweet and yeasty, with a bitter finish. Not as bitter as I had hoped, but the taste buds had plenty of competition. With luck and time, a new classic is born. Three peppercorn bottles this time, the 32oz flip-tops.
first taste Tue 7/20	A touch sweet, and not as bitter as I expected.. still plenty of time for its maturation, though!
later Sat 7/24	Grand Opening at Scout Lake. I'm not sure if Anyone tasted it; very much their loss! This has settled out nicely in just a few days, with the sweetness replaced by a tasty balance slightly tipped to the bitter side. The smoky aftertaste is quite subtle. Three bottles of peppercorn await the patient relatives.
ALE 6: 5808 mild - Lightweight, with homegrown hops and a touch of smoke grain.
brewing 23 Aug	Added medium Crystal so the color qualified as a US Pale Ale. All went smoothly, but I had less hops in the bags than I thought - 1+ Tettnanger, 1½ Willamette. Still smelled awfully good, though!
bottling 3 Sep	Used plenty of small bottles this time. All went smoothly, and the East Coast yeast wasn't too skunky.
first taste	Quite flavorful.. but not as hoppy as I would have liked. Doesn't feel like a mild ale!
later	Lesson learned on a low-alcohol beer. If you add less malt and less hops, you risk a beer that tastes yeasty. I suspect that's what I have here. It's not entirely bad, but not as well-balanced as I had hoped.
ALE 7: Millenium Ale - The '99 holiday ale, it would be darker and richer, with a few appropriate spices thrown in.
brewing 10 Nov	Added roast barley to the usual suspects (Vienna and peat-smoke), then threw in a mix of clove, peppercorn and orange peel for about 15-20 minutes of boil. All went smoothly.
bottling 24 Nov	Used less sugar for priming, as most of my brews have been more carbonated than my preference. Bottling went smoothly except for my continuous sip-stealing. This stuff is quite yummy, with a clove aroma, good balance and tasty blend of spices. I think this will go over (and down) well for the holidays! Not as hoppy as I expected, but time will tell.
later..	A tasty ale, but a bit heavy on the cloves! The other flavors are hard to detect, and the aroma suggests more than the flavor actually delivers. One of the last large bottles was dispensed at my dad's 80th birthday party. In a short while I noted several glasses held the dark brew instead of the pale stuff from the keg we rented - a good sign!
Ale #8: Limping Bitter - Commemorating my bulging disc and pinched nerve miseries of the past eight weeks, this uses the last of the smoked grains and adds a much milder mix of cloves and peppercorns than the Millenium Ale.
brewing 9 Mar	Used three bags of the homegrown hops this time, still trying to make a true bitter with my (apparently) mild '99 crop. The spice mix had far fewer cloves but nearly as much peppercorn as the last batch, so less 'cloven' and more spicy - with a little luck.
bottling 29 Mar	A dark-amber color and far milder clove aroma greeted me this time. Aside from the sugar added for carbonation, I liked the balance - and the Irish yeast was far less noticeable at bottling time than some others I have used!
grand opening Easter	STILL more clove aroma than I hoped, but tasty nonetheless. Is my family extremely polite, or are all my brews uniformly good??
I found that Ale Six (the 'light' beer) wasn't entirely consumed - a few bottles of it were set aside in the garage. I brought a bottle of it in for examination. Brian thinks the aftertaste is a lingering effect from the specific yeast I used more than anything else, and that I should put it aside for a few more months. As noted before: it isn't entirely bad or anything, I just prefer drinking other batches more. Time will indeed tell.
Ale #9: Misnomer XPA - I really thought this would be an extra-pale ale, yet when the time came I added amber malt and darkened it up. It seems that I have a difficult time following my own directions…
brewing 15 June	Purchased a bag of Chinook hops to go with my home-grown Tettnanger and Willamette, again thinking to add more bitterness. No more cloves, thank you, but a mix of peppercorn and red-pepper flakes was added near the end of the boil so that every bottle would be spicy!
bottling July	Once again, a pretty brew emerges without a great deal of bitterness. The spice is mellow but nicely apparent.
Grand Opening July	In time for the annual family campout, and well liked by all. Still not a hoppy brew, even with the Chinook hops, but the light pepper bite was popular.
later	This stuff is going fast! A bottle or two came along to each family event, and our late summers are pretty busy with birthdays and holidays. I can't complain, except that the next ale won't be ready for a while.
Ale #10: Batch Xa/Xl - Every ten years, a big backpacking trip - similarly, a big batch o' beer every ten? I signed up to make ten gallons this time, using Brian's home-grown wort. Utilizing my favorite grains and additives, with luck all ingredients will combine without competing. My hops did not smell all that good in their plastic bags, so I purchased from the shop for this batch. The final product will be split in two, going their separate ways with ale and lager yeasts (hence the Xa and Xl labels).
brewing 4 Nov	The procedure for making superbrews is quite different from the five-gallon, malt-extract varieties. Up to four brewers can make up to 12g each on the assembly line, and a refridgerator full of hop varieties awaits those four. A large pump/chiller combo pulls the brew from the boiling tank in no time, straight into the fermenter at 75° as fast as it can pump! With speedy accessories like that, the time to make 10 gallons was as fast or slightly faster than the 5g brews! The cost per glass is lower as well - no wonder these weekend sessions are so popular! This batch used Centennial hops for bittering.

Hop-Growing Notes