I bottled the Smoked Amber Ale last week, so that's carbing up in the closet now. It tasted pretty good. It fermented a little hotter than it should have (a problem I always seem to have), so there are some off flavors, but overall it's pretty good! Since I brewed it for Woodfest, I have declared that it henceforth shall be known as Woodfest Ale. It generally takes about two weeks to carbonate in the bottle, so it will be ready for Woodfest whether Woodfest is ready for it or not!
So, now that the Woodfest Ale is gradually building up the bubbles, I've started on my next beer. This will be an IPA that's a clone of Bell's Two-Hearted Ale. This one should be good! I'm a big fan of Two-Hearted, and I can't wait to see how this stacks up. Since the fridge still has some work to go and I'm probably just going to use it for kegging anyway, I'm going to try my hand at a swamp cooler again. I think I know what I can do to make this one better, so I should be able to control the temperature of the fermenting beer more accurately, thus minimizing the off flavors. Right now I have a yeast starter going for that, and I should be ready to brew tomorrow or Thursday.
Other than this, the other exciting thing about my brewing right now is that I am joining a local brew club. This club, called CHAOS, seems really cool. They have a brew house not too far from here on the Ell, with lots of cool stuff going on. They just got a bunch of 53 Gal barrels that they are going to fill up. So, I plan on getting a stake in that, giving me about 5 gallons of barrel-aged beer. It's really nice to interact with other homebrewers in real life, and I can tell I'm going to learn a lot from these more experienced brewers!
Well, that's about all for the update on my brewing. I'll probably post a more in-depth description of the Two-Hearted clone once I get that going. Until then!
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