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Wednesday, January 29, 2003

The World of Beer

Sadness and Loss
Well, I came to a hard admission last night: Big Dawg Brown Ale was awful. Really nasty. Sour, bitter, gross.

I obviously introduced some nasty bacteria to it what with all the airlock problems I had back in December. When the beer was young it was no big deal, and the beer was pretty drinkable, but as it aged the bad guys began to win. I tasted several bottles, just to be sure the sourness wasn't some unreliable artifact of the bottling process, and I couldn't stand more than a swallow from any one bottle.

You may have noticed all the past tense usage by now. I dumped it all down the sink -- approximately four gallons. Sigh -- I have now irrevocably besmirched my Irish karma. (Chuck, in case you're wondering, it was much worse than when you stopped by for the Philly-Atlanta game. Undrinkable, truly.)

(A moment of silence while Taps plays...)

(snaps fingers) Ah well. Plenty of empty bottles to fill now. :-D

The Next Generation
Rich's Almost-Finnish Sahti is still fermenting. The airlock was bubbling every fifteen seconds or so as of this morning; I have no idea how well the bread yeast I used for this batch will do, but I do know that Sahti is not supposed to be very highly carbonated, so I'll probably wait until bubbles are around a single minute apart, then bottle without any priming sugar.

-Rich