Hoppy New Beer

It's another tale of brewing, beer guts and beards this time and I make no bones about it. A stag is sitting and going steadily flat, there are people who drink the brew and there are plans within plans that may or may not allow the spice to flow.

Are you absolutely sure you want to read more?

For Christmas we got Game of Thrones on DVD. We have been watching it. But I did not know until searching for the title image that House Baratheon was shown with a rampant stag. Heigh ho.

Yes, the beer experiment officially ended yesterday when the pressure in the barrel was lost and there was bubbling when I tried to pour any beer from the barrel into a glass. As a consequence I dashed out as many bottles as I could find with screw tops and started bottling what remained of the brew. We now have a healthy selection of bottles, some plastic, scattered about the pantry.

Each bottle had to be adulterated with a small amount of sugar for the conditioning. I took some of the brew to share with people at work and it was left in a cool dry place for about four days and I'd added a small amount of caster sugar to the bottle. The last attempt to take the brew away in a bottle had ended in flat beer and a curiously awful aftertaste. I remembered that the advice to bottle the beer had included putting in a small amount of brewing sugar to each bottle so, ever keen to mess things up in new ways, I added the caster sugar. After four days I can report that the effect was a well carbonated beverage and the banishing of the aftertaste. In essence, the sugar kept the brew fresh. So, each bottle has been conditioned and now they await drinking.

My resolution this year is to create my own beer. I have fruit beer from my colleagues who set me on this path and that shall be my summer brew. However, I wish to brew something else, I hope to gain some Cascade and Fuggles hops and some local malt. I shall thus resolve to create my own Slighty Shitty brew in time for summer and a switch to the fruity beer.

See, bet you thought the pun in the title wasn't connected!