The blog is mostly upgraded now, and though there are still theme issues to work out and plugins to play with, overall the WordPress install is running good enough for government work, as they say. Good enough to resume regular blogging while I tweak with things, anyway.

Even found some time to brew a batch of beer this weekend, the first I’ve done in a while. I wasn’t following any particular recipe, other than knowing I wanted to do a Belgian-style pale something-or-other, so I simply picked up ingredients at the brew shop that seemed to fit what I was thinking.

Here’s what I ended up working with:

• 7 pounds light malt extract
• 1 pound dark Belgian candi sugar
• 1 pound 20L Crystal
• 4 ounces Belgian Special B (130L)
• 4 ounces Honey malt
• 2 ounces Chocolate malt (350L)
• 1.5 ounces Crystal hops (4.6% AA), 60 min.
• 0.5 ounces Crystal hops, 5 min
• 1 ounce coriander, 5 min
• Wyeast 1214 Belgian Abbey yeast

Original gravity came in at 1.058.

With the grains I tried something different, a sort of “mini-mash” where I heated up two quarts of water and infused it with the grains to steep for about an hour, while the main five gallons of water gradually heated to boiling. I then added that into the main pot (straining the grains, too, after they came up to heat)–rather than putting the grains in the main pot from the get-go to steep.

This is also the first beer, I believe, where I’ve used coriander. So the results should be interesting; if I had to pin down a style, I think it would fit with “Belgian Pale Ale”, which according to my quick calculations on the Beer Recipator, seems to fit just fine.