Glerp Glerp Glerp

Your humble narrator has big news to announce.

Big to me. Insignificant and silly to the rest of the world.

I managed to draw a beer today!

When I started ordering things to make beer a couple of weeks back, I had to order things I needed so I could brew, ferment, and serve. Three things. Serving homebrew is complicated, because there are so many ways. Do you want a fancy bar with built-in taps? Do you want to be able to take a keg to a picnic? Do you like bottles? I wasn’t sure what I wanted, so I ordered a little hand faucet I could attach to a keg with a little bit of tubing.

Since then, I have started work on a keezer, which is a freezer with a temperature controller and taps.

Things took a while to arrive, and they came in dribs and drabs. The brewing stuff came earliest, so it only took a short time to get that going. I put a freezer in the garage for fermenting, and shortly, I had beer. But I could not get at it to drink it.

It was torture. That sweet little 5-gallon keg of excitement and old memories, sitting there locked up like Rapunzel.

Today, finally, some stuff I needed arrived, and I was able to move the keg to the keezer and pour myself a beer. I started by pouring off a little bit of the beer on the bottom of the keg, because that beer usually has floating yeast that makes it too bitter. Then I poured this glass and gave the beer a real try.

I remember this beer now. It’s exactly the beer I have been thinking about for the last couple of days. Hurricane beer.

I used this stuff to get through 2005 in Coral Gables. Wilma, Rita, and Katrina came through, if memory serves. I used to put a keg of this beer in a big cooler with ice along with lunchmeat, cheese, and bread, and I was all set. When the power went out, I was irie, mon.

It has a wonderful banana and allspice aroma. That comes from fermenting it fairly warm, I think. I designed it to be fermented at room temperature. This time around, though, it was a little cooler. Around 71°, I think.

It’s cloudy. I think that never changes for this beer unless a flocculating agent is used. A flocculating agent is something you put in beer to make stuff fall out of it. One such agent is carageenan, a seaweed also used for thickening root beer and ice cream. It’s also called Irish moss.

It has hops to burn, but I used crystal malt to make it sweet, so it’s extremely easy to drink.

The temperature control for the keezer arrived, and this is why I was able to move this ale there. I can get to work on a wheat beer any time I want. I already have the ingredients.

This is a blast. Finally, I don’t have to buy factory beer and live with disappointment.

I don’t drink much, but I do have a policy of forcing myself to drink three beers in one day, occasionally, to fight kidney stones, and I have not been doing it. Maybe this is just the loophole I need right now.