Wuss Beer Becoming a Reality

I'm so proud. I finally made my weak-ass corn lager for Bud-drinking losers.

I got cranking on it this morning. The stuff arrived earlier in the week from Morebeer.com, and I had to get on it before the weevils descended on the grain.

I found myself with a hopping dilemma. I had two ounces of 14.4% magnum hops, which I have never used before, and I was only using half an ounce for bittering, which gives a girly-beer figure of 26.something AAU. That left me with 1.5 ounces of perfectly good hops, which I planned to either steep or use dry in the secondary.

But I also had some crystal hops lying around, and crystal hops have given me astounding results in two other beers, when used as aroma hops.

What to do?

I want to find out what magnum hops are all about, and I won't learn much if I mix them with crystal. On the other hand, magnums aren't renowned for their aromatic properties.

I decided to steep the magnums, and if it sucks when I sample it after the primary, I can still dry-hop with the crystals.

The mash, sparge, and boil were a smashing success, as usual. Somehow I usually manage to come within .001 of the desired OG, in spite of having no clue what I'm doing. I have the 5-gallon pail of hot wort cooling in the pool as we speak. Later on, I'll throw in the admittedly lame White Labs American Lager yeast starter I have sitting in a bowl.

I timed the last two batches just right. The red lager is ready to keg, and the pale ale went into the can a few days back. I cranked out an ale today (from an earlier batch) for brew-session companionship, and damned if the faucet didn't start spewing CO2. I was OUT, so that gave me a keg to clean out for the new lager.

I'll have to find a place to put the new wuss lager after the primary. All seven of my kegs will be in use. Maybe I should put it in my Tap-a-Draft jugs. It's for ManCamp anyway, so Tap-a-Draft portability will be a positive.

I think this beer will actually be quite good. Corn is like LSD. When it's abused, the way the morons at Anheuser-Busch do it, you get synthetic moose urine and bad craziness. But when prescibed by a person with the proper training, it's a boon to mankind, which relieves needless suffering.

Okay, maybe Dexedrine or Ritalin would have been better examples than LSD. But you see where I'm coming from.

I can already see the comments from my wacked-out Libertarian readers. "YEAH, man, when are we going to have progressive legislation on medical LSD?" Oh, well. At least they like guns and small government.

If this beer is as good as I think it will be, I'll formulate a new version with an OG of 1.056 or so, instead of the current Budlike 1.050.

I think I'm going to order two more Vent-Matic taps, now that the factory in Indonesia is back online. And maybe a real mash tun made from a cooler. I'm kind of tired of farting around with the stove burners and stirring during the mash.

I already bought a weldless spigot for my gorgeous 40-quart Update International brew kettle, but I couldn't bring myself to install it. That means that instead of running the hot wort into the bucket through a wort chiller, I did my usual trick, holding the boiling-hot, 60-pound kettle in my arms and pouring it in the pail by hand, while barefoot and more than slightly buzzed.

Skin grafts are the sign of a true homebrewing artist. What am I going to get? Second-degree burns, at worst? I get those every time I go outside for more than fifteen minutes. No use being a pansy about it.

Life is pain. Geena Davis said that in The Long Kiss Goodbye. That was back before all her girl parts turned into cottage cheese and slid down nine inches overnight. I'd still do her. I am known for my liberal standards.

I'm back on my diet, having discovered that I have to grease myself to get through the front door. But luckily I've found that if I manage to get a hundred grams of protein at breakfast, I can still manage to consume four beers a day without going over my calorie limit. Of course, that means doing without things like all fruits and vegetables. Which is too bad, because I was really enjoying that apple I eat every other day.

I still manage to get my green leafy vegetables. Right now, I'm having a Romeo y Julieta Cedro No. 3.

Shut up. That counts.

Don't talk to me about the Food Pyramid. Have you seen me lately? I AM the Food Pyramid.

All right. Time to finish my unbelievably, astoundingly good red lager, for which I should be awarded a Nobel Prize and a key to the Dallas Cowboys cheerleader locker room.

I know, you wish you were me. This is totally normal. Learn to live with it.