<![CDATA[State of the Beer]]>I finally got around to racking the Grove Street Honey Wheat lager this past weekend (and I’m glad it’s a lager, so I don’t feel too bad about having ended up leaving it in primary for eight weeks…).  It started out at 1.050 and hit 1.009, which is excellent; honey is great for efficient fermentation.  Nice light, clean taste.  It’ll be time to bottle in late July and time to drink it in early August, which should be perfect weather for this kind of beer.

I also finally made myself dump out the defunct barleywine.  I’ll try one again someday, but maybe not real soon; quite aside from the psychological blow of having all the expense I put into it go literally down the drain, it kept one of my carboys out of service for much too long.

As to what’s next, well, I still haven’t found the time to finish my mash tun, even though the remaining steps are relatively minor (cleaning up the burrs from making the slots will be a pain, though).  I’m going to try to get it done soon, but who knows.  If hop prices were lower, I’d be leaning toward an IPA, since I haven’t made one in a while, but as things stand that may not be practical.  When I come up with a recipe I’ll post it here.

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