I sit before you tonight enjoying a delicious IPA from my kegerator.

This is a proud moment.

Not because I’m truly enjoying a beer that I brewed (I do that often, otherwise I wouldn’t still be brewing, and hence, starting a brewery), but because I finally have gotten an IPA to come out how I envisioned it tasting. Sure, I’ve tried to brew a few IPAs in the past, but I’ve never been happy with them. They’re too harsh, or not bitter enough, or too malty, or just off.

So, as many of you know, I decided this summer that I was going to ‘figure out hops’. I made several hoppy beers with the intention of perfecting my technique and taste when it came to hops. An american brown ale, a hoppy american lager, and several pale ales were the main ones in the list. These included a series of 4 vertically hopped pale ales, which means that each used a single hop in their recipe, as well as a few mixed hop pale ales. I purposefully didn’t brew any IPAs because I wanted to get the flavors and aromas ingrained in my head before I moved on to a more bitter beer. Through this process I finally felt as though I knew how to really dial in the hoppiness of my beers, and I was ready to dive back in and do an IPA.

So as the first of the year rolled around, I set about putting my learnings into a beer. I was a bit disappointed when I first tasted it, as I thought it was too sweet (which, according to the recipe didn’t make much sense to me). It turns out, I just needed to let it carbonate a bit more, as the sweetness has died down to about the level that I thought it should be at with the addition of CO2 and the bit eit brings with it. It’s got a nice hop bite to it, but is balanced with an amazing hop aroma and a subtle sweetness to take a bit of the overbearing harshness that I find with so many IPAs. This was what I was going for, and I hit it. I won’t say that I totally nailed it, but I feel as though it was head and shoulders above anything else I’ve made in the IPA arena in the past.

But alas, perfection is a fickle mistress, and as I was cracking the first couple pints of the fully carbonated IPA into a glass, the burner was already fired up for the next iteration. The current one is still just a hair on the sweet side, even with full carbonation, and I want to try dry hopping this next one. Comparisons will be made, tweaks will ensue, and the pursuit of perfection will take another step forward.

Science.

I love experimenting, especially when it involves delicious fermented beverages.

On another note, some of you may have seen that I signed the lease for Wanderlust’s location this morning. It’s really exciting, as I now have an address which allows me to start getting paperwork for business and brewing licenses together. Both of those are a long process, so the sooner I can get them started, the better. That’s why, even though equipment is still several months out, I decided to pull the trigger on the lease.

Right now, I have 864 square feet of (essentially) empty room. It’s got a bathroom in it, and a laundry sink, and other than that, it’s pretty barren.

Which I guess is a good thing in terms of a ‘blank slate’ to work with. I’ve got to build a walk-in fridge, a grain room and a bar somewhere in that space. I need to have a floor drain dug and seal the floor. I’ve also probably got to do another 100 things that I haven’t even thought of yet, but that’s all part of the fun, right?

If you want to get a general idea of the ‘blank slate’ I’m working with, check out the album below.

Anywho, my lease starts on February 1st, so I guess that’s when the next phase of fun begins.

In the meantime, I will actually be doing a bit of traveling for my real job. I’m headed to a conference in Germany next week. The rumor is that this is one of the best conferences in the world for the type of products that I’m tasked with designing, so I’m pretty excited to be there. In terms of products, europe is usually several years ahead of us due to some slightly more forgiving (reasonable?) regulatory bodies, and so it’s really cool to see what they’re using over there (which we’ll probably be using in the US in 4-6 years). I’ll be there for 4 days, and then I’ll be visiting one of our plants just outside Munich the monday after the conference is over. (Which means I’ll be back just in time to cut my first rent check for Wanderlust….)

That means that I’ll have approximately 1.5 days to make it from Leipzig to Munich and see whatever I can see in that time. I’ve spent a very short amount of time in Munich, and none in Leipzig, so I’m sure I’ll find plenty to do. However, if anyone out there has any suggestions for places I should make sure to see in either place (or between the two), let me know.

And yes, I will be sampling the local beverages. Lets just chalk it up to research.

And no, I won’t be hauling skis over, despite the record snows that europe has been getting.