Change Your Brewing Schedule To Match The Season

It's getting on towards the end of the cooler weather up here in the great northeastern United States and time to take a break from drinking our traditional cold weather beers for awhile. The warmer weather we've been having has me and lots of other beer lovers thirsting for some really golden refreshingly awesome summertime beers again. For me there's no better beer to fill this need than a nice cold citrusy American Wheat beer because they are perfect for drinking on a warm sunny day.

Screwer In The Rye Ale

I've got about half a corny keg of my Screwer In The Rye Ale left to drink until only fond memories remain of this amazing beer for a awhile. In order to keep up with the changing seasons now is the time to ramp up my wheat beer brewing schedule again so there's plenty of cold refreshing wheat beer on tap to keep up with the warm weather demand. It's clear to me that most beer drinkers like to drink light colored lower alcohol beers during the summer months and drink the dark higher alcohol beers during the cooler months of the year.

I know that's how I'm feeling now since this past fall and winter's brewing schedule included plenty of dark beers like Cascadian Dark Ale, Irish Stout and Brown Ale. Screwer In The Rye is very citrusy with a hint of flaked rye spiciness and just enough chocolate malt to give it a darker warmer color and my Yakima Valley clone is a deep dark citrusy high alcohol warmer upper best served during the colder months.

Summer Is Perfect For Drinking Wheat Beer

In contrast my 420 Special Wheat is light in color, citrusy with a slight hint of spice almost unnoticeable amount of coriander with a clean refreshing finish. Pitched and fermented using a decanted 2 liter starter made from second generation East Coast Yeast ECY10 - Old Newark Ale™ yeast I washed from a batch of beer fermented last month.

But the truth be told I am fascinated with the thought of reaching into my yeast library, grabbing a few vials of previously washed yeast and making up a nice starter from it to pitch into my next batch of beer. I know for a fact from brewing previous batches of wheat beer that ECY-10, ECY-12 and WLP-001 will all ferment a really great tasting American Wheat beer. Just be sure to toss in some citrusy hops and some bitter orange peel and you and your beer will be good to go.

Screwy's 420 Special Wheat