Beer Done Changed!

The brew biz is moving right along.

When I used to have a keg freezer, I used the technology of the time to connect gas bottles to kegs, and kegs to taps. Since I decided to brew again, I’ve been learning about new stuff that makes things easier.

One of the neatest developments is the Duotight connector. This is a tool-free connector that attaches beer and air tubing to things. You can use it on both the gas and beer sides. It works with a new tubing called EVAbarrier which is supposed to somehow reduce beer’s exposure to oxygen.

With the old tubing, to attach tubing to barbs, you had to use hose clamps, or at least I did. I didn’t trust friction. You would get yourself some tubing, cut it to length, heat the end of it in water, and then slide the softened end onto your fitting. If it was tight, as it was supposed to be, it would hold on for dear life, and if you wanted to remove it later, it was not very easy. The whole business required considerable work.

EVAbarrier slips right into Duotight fittings. You pull a little collar, and the fitting grabs the tubing. Then you have a seal that won’t leak. To take if off, you push the collar the other way, and off the tubing comes.

Leaks are one of the big issues with draft systems, and the new stuff is supposedly less prone to leaks. If true, that could save me a lot of aggravation.

Because I have been in a hurry, I have ordered some old-tech products to go between the kegs and taps, but now I plan to send almost all these things back. I have newfangled stuff on the way.

I am continuing to research changes in craft beers.

The other day, somebody told me about “juice bombs.” A juice bomb is a sweet beer without much hop bitterness. I believe they’re for soft millennials (but I repeat myself). Real beer is an acquired taste. It’s not Hawaiian Punch. It takes a while to learn to appreciate bitterness and hop flavors. To the detriment of humanity, beer has become cool, so there are a lot of people out there who want to be seen drinking craft beers. My guess is that juice bombs were made for millennials who want to be seen drinking the latest thing, without going to the trouble to learn to enjoy actual beer.

This is just a theory.

I also read about milk stout. I know it sounds revolting. The person who named it made a big marketing mistake.

It’s called milk stout because they put lactose in it. No milk. Yeast doesn’t like lactose, so after fermentation, the beer is still sweet.

I wondered: are milk stouts juice bombs?

Yesterday I tried one. It was quite nasty. The name is Nitro Milk Stout, and people give it good reviews. It comes in a big can with a little nitrogen charger inside it to give it nice bubbles and sweetness.

When I poured it, it looked a lot like a draft Guinness, complete with the little bubble waves going up the sides of the glass, but the waves seemed to shut down quickly.

It tasted a lot like Guinness, except that I didn’t notice much bitterness. What I did taste was sugar. It was like a stout egg cream.

At first, it wasn’t all that terrible. I felt I understood it. People like to compare Guinness to sweet things like milkshakes, so somebody tried to make a sweet stout. Maybe I needed to give it a chance and expand my horizons.

It was no good. I had to quit. After about 4 ounces, I was looking to get rid of it. Hop flavors are important. Bitterness is important. This stuff was not going to do anything for me.

It occurred to me that I had an ale I wanted to clear out of the spare fridge, so I decided to see if a half-and-half would work. I tried Bell’s Two Hearted IPA the other day, and I thought it was just okay. I found the malt taste watery, and the hop aroma was brutal and free from any type of complexity. Some character on the web claimed this was THE best beer, and all sorts of alleged experts are in love with it. I thought it was a little clumsy. But maybe it was bitter enough to save Nitro stout.

No dice. Together, these beers were worse than Nitro all by itself. Down the sink they went.

I wrote an unfavorable review for Bell’s and posted it somewhere. Boy, did it make people mad. Like I was wrong. Not liking THE best beer is incorrect, apparently. It was really funny.

I tried to redeem the evening with a Blithering Idiot barleywine.

Barleywines were developed by the British while they were feuding with France. Their wine supply was not looking good, so they created very strong beers to fill the gap. Their alcoholic content is up close to winy numbers.

I once made something I thought was similar to a barleywine, and it was spectacular. It was really more like a Belgian tripel, but anyway, it was magnificent. Complex. Sweetness balanced with nice hops. It got better and better in the keg. I thought bottled barleywines might be similar.

Blithering Idiot was a disappointment. It was syrupy-sweet. It had a heavy flavor sort of like caramel and sort of like horehound. It also smelled and tasted the way Carnation milk smells, only the taste was overwhelming. I thought Watney’s Red Barrel or Whitbread might have that smell if you spilled it on the floor and let it congeal for a month.

It may be a great beer for other people. Not me. I finished it, but I would never buy it again.

My big new beer discovery is Old Rasputin Imperial Stout. Imperial stouts were supposedly made by the British for export to Russia. Imagine Guinness with about half the water removed. These beers have very strong stout flavor and aromas. You drink them from wide glasses that have a lot of room for aroma.

Old Rasputin is about 9% alcohol, so you won’t want to drink it all day. One ought to be plenty.

I wanted to learn about imperial stouts because I had what I thought was an imperial stout at a party long ago, and I loved it.

Old Rasputin is so good, it changed the way I think about beer. I had been planning to focus on thinner beers, but this stout made me realize beer had more potential than I understood, and to exploit that potential, I would need to make some high-gravity ales.

The head was thick and high, and so dark it seemed to have hints of purple in it. The beer itself was almost black. The aroma was heavy and fruity, in a wonderful way. I would say a Chunky bar might smell similar if you burned one corner.

The beer itself tasted somewhat like coffee, chocolate, and fruit. It was just about exactly what I had hoped for.

As the beer warmed up, it kept changing. The fruit and chocolate flavors increased. I thought I tasted a little licorice.

I found myself moving the glass from one nostril to the other. You can actually smell things in one nostril but not the other. The smell sort of pulsated as it went from one side to the other.

I swished it around in my mouth and enjoyed the way the taste changed after I had swallowed it. The flavor sticks to your teeth and keeps giving you pleasure after the glass is empty.

I can’t say enough about this beer. I felt genuinely sad when the last one was gone.

I am used to telling people I like the beers I brew more than anything I can buy, but that is no longer true.

I don’t have the right glass for heavy beers, but a pint Ball jar works very well. The internal shape is similar.

There is a well-known homebrewing guru named Denny Conn. I used to interact with him on Usenet in the Dark Ages. He makes heavy beers. His online signature is the same now as it was then: “Life begins at 60 — 1.060, that is.” He’s referring to the original gravity of beer. A heavy beer starts with an original gravity of 1.060 or higher, and it gets lighter as it ferments.

I always thought he was a fringe case, but he’s onto something.

I’ve also tried Brother Thelonious, a dark ale made by the same brewery. Really excellent stuff, but after Old Rasputin, it’s not very exciting. Brother Thelonious couldn’t make me rething everything I believed about beer.

Back when craft beers started popping up, I learned that small breweries could make bad beer. Worse, big breweries pretended to be small breweries, and then they made bad beer. There were craft beers out there that were like Budweiser with dye in it. Now I see another danger: small breweries that use excellent ingredients and careful methods to make sugary beer that appeals to people who never liked beer in the first place.

If you think I’m talking to you, check your tattoos. You may be right.