No, I don't have room in the 'fridge for carboys. The coldest I can get them right now is 65 degrees on the floor of my downstairs shop. The dry SAF S-23 Lager yeast does pretty good at that temp, though. It'll put at least a HALF lager character in those beers.

When the weather turns cold I'll do some real cold-lagering with fermenters on the workbench of my unheated garage. It averages about 38 in there in winter, so that's perfect. I'll switch over to liquid lager yeast strains for that.

As per hops, I don't think in IBU's (which take boiling time and SG into account). I just go by HBU's (Papazian's homebrew bittering units) which are simplistic. HBU is Alpha Acid x Ounces of hops in 5 gallons.

So the first brewing, the black beer, is real mild. (2.25 oz. x 4.2 A /2 = 4.73). Throw in a little for the finishing hops and call it 5 HBU's.

The second brewing, the light colored bock, should have twice the bitterness. (2 oz. x 9.6 A /2 = 9.6). Including finishing hops, I'd call it 10 HBU's.

That should make the blended beers in the middle 6.67 and 8.33 HBU's. I did that on purpose to make all four beers come out noticeably different from each other - and the three different hop varieties in the different blends should add some complexity.

All four of these beers are BOCKS, of a sort, and malt needs to dominate in all of them. I hopped the wheat beer the lightest because hop bitterness interferes with wheat character - and the hops get heavier as the blends move towards barley malt.

We got this stuff figured out - and I bet they'll all be good.