Great reference for brewing lambics: http://www.liddil.com/beer/lambic/lamfaq.html

There is an amazing overview of what lambics are at the enclosed link.  If you read the link you may not be interested in trying one (if you haven’t before) as the process in which they are brewed is not what intuitively would produce anything edible.  However, I assure you, they are great.  Put a framboise in the cooler, perhaps a Lindemans, and when its cold pour youself a glass.  You will be amazed at how refreshing and clean it is.

This is such a cool story and really demonstrates the attitude in the craft brew market.  The jist is that two brewing companies realized that they both had beers named the same thing.  Now typically you would expect two corporations to sue the pants off each other.  Thats not the case here.  The beers are of similar styles, so they decided to take the two beers and create a third by blending it.  The winner here is beer drinkers.  There are several reviews of the beer on the net.

Here are some photos from the transfer to the larger fermenter last night.  I think this beer is going to turn out quite good.
 

You of course can follow the status of this brew in the under development brewlogger.

Hell?

The brewing session went really pretty well on Saturday, most of them do. There were a few hiccups, such as running out of propane, but all in all not bad. As we brewed we sampled some fine Belgian and Flemish brews. Additionally we drank a black saison which I thought was really good. I am thinking that I should brew up a nice session batch of this style of beer for the summer. I am going to start working on a recipe to brew in Mid-April. . The highlights: 1085, 6.5 gallons. It is currently fermenting like crazy.

Tomorrow my friend and I will be brewing a beer inspired by Westvleteren. It is going to be a Belgian Trippel(Quadruple?). I came up with the following for the label:

The final product should be 10%+ ABV so if you find yourself lost in the woods after having a bottle, you will know why.  The recipe can be reviewed in the recipe section.

Matt and I brewed what was supposed to be a 10 gallon batch of Enis Oil yesterday. It took us all day and I think we discovered the upper limits of our system. The mash tun was literally full to the top(34 lbs of grain). The boil really never got to rolling either. We finished with 12 gallons of wort (@1087). It was bubbling away when I left for work this morning. We are hoping that the California ale can ferment it down to 1015 which would yield a approximate alcohol by volume of 9.4%. Should make for some good summer drinking.

You can follow the progress of the Enis Oil in the brewlog.

There are a ton of great resources on the internet for beer recipes. Unfortunately for brewers many are posted in proprietary formats that are not compatible with other software packages. Some clever brewers put their heads together and came up with an open format they named BeerXml. In an effort to break down barriers between the different software packages I have written a converter to translate Promash files into BeerXML files. This is not a covert attempt to subvert Promash in any way, this is only an attempt to encourage the sharing of recipes between brewers. It is totally possible that something like this already exists but I have not stumbled across it.

Enough talk. The file can be downloaded below. If anyone has issues with exceptions please let me know. Its not perfect but it should get the job done 90% of the time.

Requirements:

Windows(So much for the big talk about open standards), .net 1.1

ToDo:

Make runnable under MONO

Usage:

[required] {optional}

Converter.exe [Directory Or File to Convert] {/s:Suffix} {/o:OutputDirectory} {/p}

sample: Converter.exe lager.rec /s:_Converted o:C:\ConvertedBeerRecipes

*File or Directory to convert. If no value is entered the application will process all the recipe files in the executing directory
*/suffix: Suffix to append to the convert files ie. _Converted (short form /s)
*/output: Directory to Output the files to. If blank will output to same directory (short form /o)
*/processSessions[+|-] Would you like to convert the brewing session files as well as the recipes. (short form /p)

Download: Promash Converter

This spreadsheet show is a great resource showing which yeasts are equal across brands.   A nice saison can be made with the belgian wit yeast that I am planning on using for the Leaky Wader Wit I am planning on using.