Four

1. I'm excited to announce that Molly's first beer is bubbling away in the fermentor. I'm excited to taste the final product, but I'll let her get on the brewlog and tell you about it herself in the coming week.

2. Tomorrow I'll be brewing up another batch of Annabelle, this time with a big healthy slurry of the right yeast (harvested straight out of Molly's batch). She won't be finished anytime soon, but I'm excited to spend my Labor Day laboring over my propane burner, as hopefully weather will be agreeable.

3. I was able to get Dan, one of the brewers here at Bell's, to draw off a slurry of Bell's proprietary lager yeast for the Champagne Lager I hope to brew in about a week or two. I need to time the brewing with the cool secondary fermention of Annabelle and Molly's beer, because, as I've written before, lagers require long, cool primary fermentation for their clean, crisp character. So after tomorrow, that's on deck.

4. The next experiment further on down the road, possibly within the month, is Fair Trade Stout, a "Foreign Extra Stout" style with a huge amount of Fair Trade coffee. FESs are massive versions of your typical stout, sweeter than a dry stout (Guinness) with substantially more alcohol and hop character. I'll back off on the hops a bit to let the coffee be the foremost flavor and aroma, with a good alcohol bite and lots of complimentary roastiness from the malt. I'll probably use local Water Street coffee because it's damn good. This one might take a bit of aging so don't expect it until the snow comes.