OK, so I brewed both the Nelson Sauvin pale ale and the Vienna lager.

For the pale ale, I did a partial mash - 4 pounds (1.8 kg) of grain in my 2-gallon (7.6-L) cooler - and added 3 pounds (1.4 kg) of dried malt extract to make the wort. The partial mash was a mix of crystal malt (40 °L), crystal malt (60 °L) and Maris Otter. I boiled the full wort with my propane cooker, cooled with my immersion chiller and fermented in my swamp cooler.

The Vienna lager ended up being 100% Vienna malt. I mashed in at 131 °F (55 °C) in my kettle, with a fairly thin mash - around 2.0 qts/lb. (4.2 L/kg) - to bring out some of the malty/grainy notes from the Vienna malt. I started heating the mash immediately and ramped the temperature up by about 2 °F (~1 °C) per minute until I reached 154 °F (68 °C). I rested there for about 45 minutes, then heated the mash to 168 °F (76 °C). I took a bit of time to cool the wort down to near lager fermentation temperatures, but when I got it in the ballpark, I racked the wort to my new 7-gallon (26-L) stainless steel cylindro-conical fermenter. Normally, I stop siphoning from the kettle when I start getting "gunk" from the bottom, but this time I racked as much as I could into the fermenter and just dumped the crud out the bottom the next day. Very slick.

I ended up "kräusening" the pale ale once primary fermentation ended. I cooked up 1 quart (~1 L) of wort with a bunch of Nelson Sauvin hop added and added that when I racked to secondary. My idea was to get some more hop flavor and aroma into the beer that wouldn't blow off with a vigourous fermentation. The renewed fermentatin from the "kräusen" (it's not really called kräusen since it's an ale) was steady, but nowhere near as vigorous as a primary fermentation.

I fermented the Vienna at 53 °F (12 °C) in my chest freezer (with override thermostat). Once the fermentation wound down, I let the temperature rise to 60 °F (16 °C) for two days for a diacetyl rest.

Sunday night (last night), I racked the pale ale to keg. I also dumped the yeast from the Vienna lager and dialed the temperature in my chest freezer down to 40 °F (4.4 °C). The pale ale tasted very promising. The lager, like all green lagers, tasted like crap - but that should improve with time.