99 bottles of beer on the wall....

WOW! I can't believe over two weeks have passed since my last post. There's only about a month to go and I can confirm the rumors are true. Time truly flies when you get close to the big day. No pressure... There are only a dozen cases of beer to brew amongst the typical stress surrounding a wedding. It seems to me there's no fun in a stress free wedding!

Here's where we stand at the moment:

• 3.5 Cases of oatmeal stout have been bottled (woohoo!!). The samples tasted exactly the way I anticipated. They'll have over a month to bottle condition, which should give them some time to mature.
• 2 Five Gallon batches of IPA have been brewed. They've been fermenting for 10 days. The hydro samples were pretty perfect and gravity readings are where I expect. Secondary fermentation and dry hopping will commence today.
• 2 One liter yeast starters of Weinhenstephan Weizen are spinning now. My hope is to brew two five gallon batches of wheat beer on Friday. Hopefully I'll find time to wash some bottles too.

So, at the moment I'm only 23 minutes behind schedule :) That estimate may not be entirely accurate, since I won't have everything bottled by April 1st like I initially planned. I'm making progress though. Most importantly, both recipes look and taste really promising. I may sound like the stress is building, but in all honestly I'm just getting excited! Here's the recipe for the IPA I made and some pics of my progress:

Recipe Type: All Grain
Yeast: Wyeast 1056 (American Ale)
Yeast Starter: No
Batch Size (Gallons): 5
Target Original Gravity: 1.056
IBU: 61.5
Boiling Time (Minutes): 60 minutes
Color: 11.24 SRM
Mash: Single Infusion - Batch 1 at 152 for 60 min - Batch 2 at 154 for 60 min

Grain Bill:

• 9 lb. Domestic 2-Row
• 1 lb. Crystal Malt 60 L
• 0.75 lb. Aromatic Malt

Hops

• 1 oz Cascade (5.4%) as first wort hop
• 0.25 oz Centennial (8.8%) at 45 minutes
• 0.5 oz Cascade (5.4%) at 30 minutes
• 0.25 oz Centennial (8.8%) at 20 minutes
• 0.25 oz Citra (14%) at 15 minutes
• 1 oz Citra (14%) at 5 minutes
  

First wort hopping. This is when the first hop addition occurs while sparging.

Hop additions ready to go.

Lots of beer fermenting away... a sign you could be marrying a homebrewer.

Sign #2 that you're marrying a homebrewer: The dishwasher is used for drying bottles while you're left to hand wash the dirty dishes.

Last night getting the starter ready and preparing to wash some yeast when I transfer the IPA.