Back again

So I'm not entirely sure why I didn't post about my last three brews, but so far they're all fantastic.  I've all but licked my problem with overcarbonation, as the Hefe, the Red, and the Pale all came out at just under what I imagine their carbonation should be.  Which is a very good thing!  And instead of saving my last few bottles of porter for family and friends, I decided to just finish the rest of it.  It's so embarassing having to say "open it over a sink and pour slowly into a glass...and even then it still probably is going to foam out everywhere".  I'll never give out failed beer to anyone ever again.

Having just racked to secondary my fifth brew of the year, an IIPA, I can say with some certainty that I have a knack for brewing.  I'm very confident that once I get my temperatures under control (all but impossible in my current living situation) and up production (a nice conical fermenter perhaps) that my beer will be, dare I say it, approaching a nanobrewery in terms of quality.  Lots of ground to cover until then, and at least half a dozen batches once I feel I've dialed in a brewing setup.  Alas, that situation will not happen until far after grad school completes and I obtain a job (Amazon?  Google?  Valve?  Planetary Resources?  Seattle!) and my life somewhat stabilizes.

This, of course, assuming the world doesn't end as we know it in the coming year.

One form of temperature control that I can have more of a force over is mashing.  The pale ale, initially thought to be skunked, I now believe to have a sweeter and fuller feel due to my higher-than-optimal mash temperature.  I believe I mashed in the high 150s, rather than the low 150s to upper 140s.  Nevertheless, the beer is decent and it was a first round recipe.  Next time I make it, mayhaps soonish, I'll reduce the amount of color by a few points, drop the mash temp (conservatively low as opposed to slightly-riskily-higher), and split the batch into two.  I have an experiment to conduct with a new triple-recipe.  *cue maniacal laughter*