It’s time for the third experiment in the Brew Your Own (BYO)/Basic Brewing Radio (BBR) Collaborative Experiment series. Our main idea in this series is to test worthwhile questions regarding brewing at a homebrew scale. James Spencer (host of BBR) and I choose experiments — based on reader/listener input — that have the potential to yield good results and ask other homebrewers to join us in performing the experiment. Although each individual experiment is designed to be simple enough to encourage participation, the fact that multiple homebrewers perform the same experiment allows us to place more confidence in the results if all or most of the outcomes are similar. Hopefully, the things we discover will help homebrewers brew better beer.

Last Saturday, I toured Austin's (512) Brewery. The name comes from the fact that Austin's telephone area code is 512. The owner and brewer Kevin Brand invited the Austin ZEALOTS homebrewing club for a tour and 30-40 of us showed up.

For the holidays, I'm visiting my folks in South Dakota and on Sunday I brewed a beer with the homebrew club from Sioux Falls -- The Big Sioux Brewing Society (BSBS). 

Over the Fourth of July weekend, I brewed three beers — an IPA, a porter and a dry stout. In the process, I also got a bunch of brewing equipment cleaned up.

OK, so the week after brewing the IPA and porter, I brewed my pale ale and a dry stout.

I had a beer-intensive extended Memorial Day weekend. (Is there any other kind?) On Thursday, I made two yeast starters (for an IPA and a porter) and a gallon of kräusen beer. Friday morning, I added the fermenting kräusen beer to my Vienna lager. That beer should be just about ready to keg and I hope to get that done later this week.