Next Up: Heavy Fake Belgian

I kegged my latest lager today. If I had to describe it, I’d say it’s an IPA made with lager yeast. I used a grain bill fit for an IPA and fermented it with lager yeast. This means I didn’t get the weird fruity flavors that make IPA what it is, and that sounds like a sacrifice, but it’s also nice to get the clean, unmolested flavor of a lager.

Is the lager any good? I’m not sure. I drank a glass because I’m impatient, and it seemed to me that it was too sweet and lacked the kind of aroma modern beers get from dry hopping, which is adding hops after brewing is over. I can’t be sure, though, because the beer still needs more carbonation. That will add carbonic acid, and that sharpens up the flavor. And lagers improve with age.

I fermented under pressure at about 66 degrees. Ordinarily, you would ferment a lager with no pressure down in the fifties, and after that, you would do various time-consuming things to perfect it. Pressure-fermenting allows brewers to create lagers fast, at relatively high temperatures, but I don’t know whether it completely does away with the need for aging. There isn’t that much information available for homebrewers yet.

The glass I drank was okay, but it needed to be colder and fizzier.

I transferred the lager from the fermenter to the keg under pressure. I cleaned a keg and hooked it up to the fermenter. I shot a lot of CO2 into the keg to reduce the O2 content. I then used my CO2 tank to pump the lager directly into the keg, with the keg and fermenter closed to the atmosphere. After that, I burped some of the gas out of the keg to reduce the CO2 further.

To really do it right, you fill the keg with sanitizer and water and use CO2 to pump it out, but I didn’t think that was necessary. That’s overkill. When you put 5 gallons of liquid into a Corny keg, you leave very little room for gas, and if you’ve already shot a fair amount of CO2 into it, you’re probably dealing with one gallon of gas which is mostly CO2.

I now have one incredible stout, a lager which will be, at least, okay, and a wheat beer which is drinkable. I had to fiddle with my draft setup a lot because it’s new, and I may have tainted the wheat beer with some kind of lactobacillus or something. It’s pretty sour, but not so sour it’s useless.

I have a wheat beer and an ale fermenting, and at least one will be ready to keg in a few days.

I need inventory. If you only have one keg of beer to drink from, you will empty it faster than you think. If you have 5 kegs, you will empty them slowly, and you will be able to maintain a variety of beers.

My stout is so wonderful, I’m afraid I’ll blow through it. I was so concerned, I ordered more ingredients yesterday, and they will be here tomorrow. I can’t even explain how good it is. I now think stout is my favorite beer. Oatmeal stout, which is what I made. Imperial stout. Wonderful stuff. Stout is full of sweet, sour, bitter, and full of flavors which have no right to be there. How can a beer taste like caramel, coffee, and chocolate when none of those things are in it?

I still can’t dispense 5 beers via mounted faucets in the keezer. I need four fittings to connect two more kegs to faucets, and the Ebay seller I used is taking forever. Once these parts arrive, I’ll be all set.

Every time I pour my first beer of the day, I raise it and thank Jesus for coming for us. I tell him I celebrate his return.

It’s too bad I have the tolerance of a medium-sized ant. Three beers, and my day of drinking is done. Things were very different when I was young, but of course, I was also an idiot, so there was a tradeoff.

Because I’m very interested in getting my beer endeavors working, I drink beer nearly every day, and I have realized it impacts my life. I’m not getting in the car if I’ve had more than one beer, so now I have to plan my errands and my drinking. Sometimes I ask myself what will happen if I really need to go somewhere and I’ve had two beers. I have to think ahead.

It looks like coronavirus is behind me, at least for the next few months. I think I can detect a tiny vestige of my symptoms, but it’s basically over. Looks like I’m not yet one of the cursed few who get the virus and die in two weeks.

I spend more and more time with God now. I see people I pray for and talk to doing better and better. Things are going extremely well. The revelation I got about closeness with God is paying off. It’s beautiful.

I have a friend whose wife is immature and malignant. She has put him through terrible suffering for 15 years. We pray for him all the time. She finally blew up and showed what she really was. She ran around with some man. She told my friend she would take his kids. She even beat herself up and told the police my friend did it, and she was dumb enough to do it in front of the children. She went on the web and researched poisons, and she left her handwritten notes where my friend could photograph them.

I keep sharing revelation with my friend, and he puts it to work. God has changed his mindset and set him free. The wife has done things so stupid, they pretty much assure he will get the kids and the house.

There used to be turmoil in his home. That was before she left. Now when I call, the kids are asking him what he wants for dinner. They’ve cleaned the house. They pray together every day. There is peace. They want him to get custody. He sent me a new family photo without the wife, and it shocked me. They seem to glow.

Things will keep getting better and better for people who stay close to God. Things will get worse for the rest. The world is being centrifuged. From my perspective, it’s beautiful. It looks different to people on the other side.

Get close to God. Let him fill you. Be like the ark of the covenant. Carry him with you everywhere you go. It will work. It’s his plan.