Some updates:
June Gloom (William says "Joon Gloom") has now conditioned for 2 weeks. It's pretty darn fantastic. Strong citrus and cloves, with a good alcohol warmth. I'm surprised by how absent the anise is. Maybe it's there and it's just blending with the other flavors so well. It has had about 10 weeks to mellow, after all.
Skittlebrau is about halfway through conditioning. I jumped ahead and sampled a bottle after only a week, and although there was essentially no carbonation, the flavor is quite good. The fruit is more present than I remember, possibly because the alcohol bite has come down a bit. And let me say, there is quite a bit of alcohol, likely 9% or so. The color is less intense than I wanted, but it's still quite nice.
Mayor of Chile Town has just gone into the bottle. A quick tasting shows only a hint of chile spice, certainly less than I had hoped for. Otherwise the flavor is very nice. We'll see in a couple of weeks as the flavors blend if the spice comes through.
Pope of Chile Town is in the carboy. This sucker should be good. Fermentation started off slowly, but it's picked up in the last 12 hours or so and is now at a fever pitch. I brewed this immediately after bottling MOCT (so I could pitch onto the remaining yeast), and so I decided to really, really overdo the chile content after not detecting much spice in the previous brew. The final tally ended up being something like 10 guajillos, 4 anchos, 10 japoneses, and 5 fresh serranos. You'd think that might impart some spice to 2 1/2 gallons of liquid, right? Just to be safe, I'm going to add some more chiles to steep after primary fermentation has finished. Well, after I add the honey in a week to help kick the ABV up a few points. This one will likely be in the carboy for a month or so.
There are two recipes planned for later on the summer, once POCT is out of the carboy at least. The first is a tamarind IPA (tentatively named 77X-42, in homage to Professor Frink's ultra sour sourball), using plenty of tamarind and a good amount of piloncillo to balance the tartness (and boost the ABV, natch). The second is basically a hard ponche, using the principle of adding yeast to apple cider. Instead, I'm hoping to make a big batch of ponche, then dump in the yeast. I have no idea what will happen, but hey, who cares. It'll be interesting at least.