Is It Spring Yet?

Since I haven't posted in awhile, here's a quick rundown of what I've been up to beerwise.

• Kicked the Oatmeal Stout keg.  Overall this was a nice beer.  Good roasted barley character, a little toasted flavor, and a nice and smooth mouthfeel.  May have been just a bit too bitter, so I'll probably use a little less at 60 minutes.  While I enjoyed drinking this beer, I got a little sick of it by the end.  Not a real session beer.
• Brewed the Double IPA with almost 2 ounces of Warrior at 60 to bitter.  I split 2 ounces of Simcoe and 2 ounces of Summit into three piles and added each pile at 15, 5, and flameout.  I was going to use the yeast cake from the VSS Imperial Blend but the starter beer I brewed and attempted to FWH for the first time, did it wrong, and mistreated the yeast somehow so it tasted too estery.  I just pitched 2 packets of US05 instead.  This beer did finish too sweet, so next time I'll use more sugar instead of malt to get it dryer, but it tasted drier than it measured.  At 10% ABV and 125 IBUs, this beer is really deceiving and dangerously drinkable.
• Brewed a Patersbier with Wyeast 3787 and all Saaz hops.  I'm hoping to use the yeast cake for a tripel in a month or so.
• I have converted my keg into a kettle, but I still need to clean it up and do a test run.  I'm not real confident in how fast I'll be able to boil with my current burner.  I think that I'll also probably need to build a new immersion chiller for 10 gallon batches, which reminds me that I need to do that soon since I'm having a Big Brew Day club event and was going to split a batch of Saison with a friend.  I'm thinking about giving the Brew in a Bag all grain method a try this summer once I finish the upgrade.
• Last Saturday the RAZE club toured the Mantorville Brewing Company.  The owner, Tod Fyten, started as a homebrewer and gave us the full on beer geek version of the tour.  It was awesome!  He really had a lot of insight into the history of beer and brewing, especially in Minnesota, and also gave us a detailed talk of his brewing process.  We finished it off with some samples of his Maple Ale, Blonde, and Smoked Porter.  I got a growler of the Smoked Porter and had no problem finishing it. 

This weekend the club is meeting at a member's house to get rhizomes, but it's been pretty cold here lately so I think we might get frozen out.  I'd like to get the keggle cleaned up and do a test boil at some point too.  At some point I need to brew again too, probably an APA.