My homebrew club's homebrew contest — the Austin ZEALOTS Homebrew Inquisition — is coming up. As my homebrew supply has dwindled to next to nothing, I needed to brew some beer. So, that's what I've been doing every other day for the past few days.

I decided to brew a series of 3-gallon batches for the contest. The main reason was that I could skip making a yeast starter, saving me  time that I could spend on making more beer. At around 100 billion cells per package, White Labs and Wyeast yeasts have enough cells to pitch to 3 gallons of average strength wort at around the optimal rate. Plus, a couple years ago, I bought four 3-gallon Corny kegs, so I'd have an easy packaging option, too. 

On Friday, I brewed my "house porter." This is the same porter I've brewed twice a year almost every year that I've been a homebrewer. (A partial mash formulation of this recipe appeared in the October 2006 issue of Brew Your Own.) The brewday went smoothly until I put the fermenter in my chest freezer fermentation chamber. While I was brewing, the outside temperature peaked at 107 °F. So, when I filled my conical fermenter with 3 gallons of wort, this left 4 gallons of headpspace at around 100 °F. When I put the fermenter in the fermentation chamber, this headspace cooled down, the air contracted and sucked in all the water out of my fermentation trap. The water was clean, but I was still disappointed that I hadn't anticipated that. (Sometimes being outside all day in the blazing heat isn't very conducive to thinking.) 

On Sunday, I brewed my pale ale. This is my other house ale that I've probably brewed 30 times. The only difference in this batch was that that I added around 10% Vienna malt to the grist, just to see if I'd like that. On Sunday, I also racked two carboys of IPA to keg and added hop extract (made with a French press) and dry hops. These had been sitting in primary way too long, but surprisingly, they didn't taste all that bad. And, given that the French press extract had enough malt extract in it to carbonate the keg, maybe the renewed fermentation will clean up the beer a little. This coming weekend, I'll throw them in my serving fridge and find out.

For both the pale ale and the IPA, I just grabbed whatever hops I had in my fridge and used those. I bittered the pale ale with Columbus and added some Willamette late in the boil. I'll add some Cascade and Amarillo via the French press method when I keg the beer. I'll also dry hop with that same mix. For the IPA, I used Cascade, Centennial and Amarillo as the dry hops and also the "French press" hops. 

Yesterday (Tuesday), I brewed a dry stout. I used the Murphy's stout recipe from the "150 Classic Clones" special issue as I have made that before and loved it. I especially like this clone because the only Murphy's I can get in Texas is the beer in the widget can and I like it with regular beer carbonation better. 

I'm also going to brew Thursday and probably Sunday. Thursday's brew is going to be 3 gallons of "Gatoraid Gose" -- a lightly salty beer brewed with Gatoraid (the sports drink). A little experimentation with mixing Shiner Bock and Gatoraid indicated that I'll be using quarter-strength Gatoraid as my brewing liquor. At this rate, the beer should have a light, salty "bite," but still be drinkable and taste like beer. I'll write more about this later. 

Sunday, if I brew, will be 10 gallons of IPA. (I know I just kegged 10 gallons of IPA, but I have a lot of hops in my fridge and I like IPA.)