Bamf Beer

We’ve been busy. First, I’ll just quickly mention that this is a new blog theme. I may not stick with it. If you have an opinion on it, leave a comment, good or bad.

Now for the beer!

Bamf Beer’s Black Asphalt Stout

First, the Black Asphalt Stout scared the crap out of us both. Everything seemed ok during fermentation, temps were great, the brew day went off without a hitch (mostly), but we both took a taste during the final gravity reading just before we transferred to the kegs, and…. ewww.

It tasted like we brewed it with 100% roasted barley, and then added black patent malt to the fermenter or something. It tasted kinda like coffee when you leave it on the burner and go out to get something real quick but get caught up talking to some chick in the garbage bag aisle and…. um… nevermind. Anyway it was bad.

So we kegged it anyway. We’re doing 10-gallon batches now, so Matt and I each get our own 5-gallon keg of whatever we brew. Matt now has a kegerator, so he brought his home and fired it up. His reports were not promising. On the day I finally got around to stopping by to try it, Matt had kicked up the CO2 on that keg, and guess what.

All of a sudden, the beer was frickin’ heavenly. So, Bamf Black Asphalt Stout is a hit. I love the stuff.

Kegerators all around!

On the kegerator front, my birthday is coming up. Matt got me shanks and bev line. I’m hoping to get the faucets and double gauge I asked for, and then I just need a nice drill bit and some gas line, and I’m in business — and if I get the 10lb CO2 canister on top of all of that, I’m rockin’! I have a spare fridge in the basement that I’ve been using primarily for beer-related activities for years. It’s now going to become a two-tap kegerator. I can serve Black Asphalt Stout and Hacker’s Knuckle ESB at the same time.

Matt got a ready-made kegerator for his birthday, and it’s really nice. Digital controls, room for 3 cornies, and small enough to not be too obtrusive in his apartment. It has a nice chrome tower and a single tap. Good times.

Still Unnamed: Scottish Ale (80~)

In addition to Black Asphalt and Hacker’s Knuckle, we also brewed an 80~ Scottish Ale that’s still fermenting and looking good. I had never brewed one of these, and was surprised by how long the yeast stayed in the primary phase. The airlocks were still bubbling vigorously 4 days after pitching. Even now, a full 7 days after pitching, they’re bubbling a few times per minute, there’s been very little obvious flocculation, and “the darkening” hasn’t happened yet.

As an aside, people will disagree with this, but it works for us: The Darkening is the thing we look for to indicate a complete fermentation. The airlock isn’t the whole story, and we don’t like sticking stuff in our beer to take hydrometer readings, so we don’t. We look at the beer. When a reddish-colored ale is fermenting, it’s cloudy and mud-colored. When it’s done, it darkens dramatically. We either rack to secondary, or we don’t. Usually we don’t. Either way, we give it a few more days and then keg. Once it’s in kegs, Matt likes to kick his full of gas right away and get to drinkin’. However, my palate seems to be really sensitive to some compound in “green beer”, so I kinda need to condition it a little longer in order to be able to make it drinkable for me. I’ve never identified the cause of this flavor.

Stay tuned!

So, now that the blog is moved over to a new host, with a new theme, and a new version of WordPress, we’ll start posting more of the pics, notes and recipes you’ve been accustomed to. Enjoy! We will!