The Talkin’ Headline Blues is a weekly series of recordings using unedited headlines from CNN.com written as a song. This week’s topic: Weak Beers.
Bomb for ceremony in bag.
See emotional video.
Cold beers.
Weak woman.
Fake 18-foot nation.
Everything….
Home-brew recipe from Brooklyn Brew Shop.
I had big plans for this homebrew. BIG PLANS. I was going to trot it out on Thanksgiving for everyone to sip on during dinner and through the weekend. My brother is really into hard cider, so I figured he might like this apple-steeped beer.
It’s another BBS recipe (of course, I don’t do ANYTHING ELSE), except I didn’t use the apples they suggested, I just used what we had in our bottom fridge drawer. I think it was one Honey Crisp and one Gala. Or maybe a Pink Lady or a Cripps Pink. Anyway, it was two of those. I probably should have used a green apple, or something less sweet, though, because…
The beer SUCKS. Well, on the first sip you initially think, “Oh, hey, I taste apples, this is going to be good,” but then one second later, “Uh, oh, ah…GET OUT OF MY MOUTH.”
I’m probably being too critical. It definitely isn’t good, though. It tasted medicinal. Just, not good. I tried two, one after two weeks in the bottle and one after three. BOTH BAD. They look good, though. It’s a dark beer with a reddish hue and a nice frothy head. I wish it tasted like it looked.
Anyway, I’m disappointed because I didn’t have this for Thanksgiving. FAILURE. But I’m just going to stick the other seven bottles down in the basement and let them sit until next fall and then try one and hope that some aging does something, anything. ANYTHING.
Next homebrew review up…Prohibition Ale.
It was starting to get cold a few weeks ago, so I decided to do this BBS porter homebrew recipe. I’ve really been getting into darker beers lately with the sun going down around 4pm. They seem to warm me more than, say, an IPA or something like that.
This one turned out great. It took an extra week of bottle conditioning to get the right amount of carbonation (the first one I opened after 2 weeks was completely flat and the second after 3 weeks was only a little better), but now it tastes really great. Chocolatey with a nice dry finish. This is probably one of the more successful homebrews I’ve done. Kind of wish I had more than 5 left.
Only issue I had when I brewed this one was a blow off on the second day of fermentation. I use a blow-off tube for the first week before switching to an airlock, which usually keeps the stopper from popping off when there’s a really active fermentation. Not this one, though. The porter went nuts. No telling how long the stopper was off, but, as far as I can tell, the beer wasn’t damaged at all and NO ONE HAS BEEN POISONED YET.
Next review up…Apple Crisp Ale.
This homebrew, from the end of September is the result of:
So, I had a bunch of leftover grain because Brew and Grow (the shop I buy supplies from and which should really be named “Brew ‘n’ Grow”) used to only sell one- and five-pound bags of grain and I never needed that much of anything since I only make one-gallon batches that need like 0.01 pounds of Bavarian Special B Malt.
This is probably one of the main reasons I stopped brewing back in April. I had to spend like $20 or $30 in order to make 8 or 9 bottles of beer. NO ROOM FOR PROFIT. And then I had all this extra, specialty grain that I figured I would NEVER USE. (Note: Brew ‘n’ Grow now lets you scoop your own amounts. THANKS BREW AND GROW, you’re the best.)
Okay, so, I had leftover grain and I found the jalapeno saison recipe in Brooklyn Brew Shop’s recipe book (with the real intention that I wanted to make pickled jalapenos) and I thought, “What could possibly go wrong by using a bunch of random grains and not really following the directions and grain amounts in the recipe?”
Well, the beer is NOT GOOD. I mean, it’s okay. You take your first sip and you’re hit with HOT HOT HOT STEAMING BURNING MY TONGUE SPICY THIS TASTES LIKE A PEPPER I’M ON FIRE. But then that goes away pretty quickly because you’re also drinking beer. So that part was good and you just kind of keep drinking the beer until you get about halfway through and you think, “Oh, this isn’t very good. I don’t like this. It’s not very spicy tasting anymore. It feels like I’m chewing something. It tastes like when you bite aluminum foil. Yuck.”
Of course you finish the beer, though. And then feel terrible the rest of the night (because maybe you also had a second one just to see if the first was a fluke).
But, it was an attempt at something. I’m sure worse beer has been made. This is what it looks like. It’s cloudy like backed-up toilet water:
Note: The more of these that I drank (and I’ve gulped down all but one so far), the more I thought, “Oh, this isn’t THAT bad.” So, in conclusion, I like the taste of backed-up toilet water.
Next homebrew review…Chocolate Maple Porter.
Music Vomit 