"Homer no function beer well without."

Chicago.

I need to brew a new batch of beer. Soon. I've already passed the point where I might have had some overlap between batches; there are, at most, ten bottles of the ITMFA IPA left. The difficulty, of course, has been finding enough contiguous weekends without other, more serious commitments. Using my preferred brewing schedule, I need three weekends in a row without much else to do. This is further complicated by my at home/in Chicago work schedule, and now working at the market every other Saturday, so that it's not so simple to find five or more hours of open time.

This weekend's a no-go. Even if I could work it in around helping prep for Jesse and Regina, and the market, I'd be a wreck. That's a moot point, though, since Sharon and I'll be back in Pennsylvania visiting family next weekend. That means that the closest, best time to start would be Saturday, 26 August. Rack to the secondary fermenter the next Saturday, and bottle everything a week after that. The basement's at a good temperature for most ales - 66°F or so - and ought to remain relatively constant for some time.

The question, then, is what to make? Assuming a brew date of the 26th, it won't be drinkable (by my estimate) until the second week of October. Sure, it'll be carbonated by mid- to late-September, but I've found that it takes about five weeks in the bottle to allow the green quality¹ to dissipate. With Halloween and Thanksgiving situated well within the prime consumption period, I'm tempted to make something special for the season. So far, I'm considering the following:

• Pumpkin ale. This isn't a recognized style, per se, though there are a lot of examples out there. Pumpkin's a necessity², of course, and it's well worth considering the "pumpkin pie spices": cinnamon, allspice, cloves, nutmeg and ginger. Nothing too intense, not so it feels like you're drinking liquid pie, but just enough to lend complexity.³ I think that this would call for an ale that's reddish-brown, but not opaque, with a higher alcohol content to extend the shelf life. This isn't an everyday beer, most likely. Maybe some brown sugar. A firm hop bitterness, without too much on the aroma. And a yeast that emphasizes the maltiness, but tends to a clean flavor profile.
  
  
• Chilli ale. I've been thinking on this one for a while, but I'm worried about having five gallons of undrinkable beer on my hands. There's the potential for a Halloween-themed beer, with devils or some such⁴, and the weather'd be getting into dark beer season. Though I'm sure I could eventually come up with a pale version of a chilli beer just right for summer barbecues, I'm quite confident that the higher alcohol, heavier body and more intense, malty flavors of a porter or stout would give a little more insurance against failure. Besides, I haven't done a real stout before.
  
  
• Irish red ale. Something with caramel and butterscotch-type flavors, more malt-intense than the pale ales I've done lately, but without getting into the rich, heavy, smoky qualities of the darkest beers. This would probably be the best option for a beer to match Thanksgiving dinner, and wouldn't make for a bad everyday beer, either. It also doesn't need to be as alcoholic as the previous two, since I wouldn't have to expect it to last as long. I would have to make sure to save enough for when my family comes to visit at Thanksgiving time, though...

Until that time, I can get back to buying miscellaneous six-packs from Star Liquor. The weather's just right to be enjoying some crisp, cold lagers and wheat beers.

* * * * *

¹Being a smell, it's nigh impossible to describe. 'Green beer' is unlike anything else in my experience, so I can't describe it in terms of something more familiar. I'd recommended that Jared pop open a bottle of his first batch after two weeks conditioning, and another each week after, so he could see what it was. At first, he thought something had gone funky, until I assured him it would disappear over the next month. Same thing happened to me the first time, except I didn't figure out what it was until sometime much later.

²Which means that it'll have to be canned pumpkin. On the one hand, I'd love to use something fresh and local, but the process is long and messy enough already. Besides, I grew up on pies made from Libby's pumpkin puree, and I'll admit that it's tough to find fresh squash to make a pie that richly pumpkin-y. In Downingtown, at least. Madison, and its wealth of farms, may have something better to offer.

³Talk about a maddeningly fine line. It's hard enough to estimate while cooking, but a complete crapshoot through the two-month beermaking process. It's also impossible to be sure what may happen to flavors through the fermentation process.

⁴Or Edward Gorey's Gashlycrumb Tinies. "N is for Neville, who died of ennui."