Tapping the Stout

After the Stout had been in the keg it was time for a taste test. It pours very dark, almost pure black. It has a nice dark brown head to it, although it disappears quickly. It has a great taste, a little bit of roasty-ness to it. Overall a great tasting beer!

Now this has lef tme with an interesting problem. With four beers on tap how will guests be able to tell which beer they are about to pour? More on that next time. Prost!

Kegging the Stout

After brewing the stout it sat and fermented for four weeks. Once there the fermentation stage was complete it was time for my second favorite thing about brewing, kegging. Why is kegging my second favorite? Because drinking is my first and this is the last active step before that can happen. Transferring from the fermentation bucket to the keg presented a new challenge this time around. Typically when you are transferring you want to stop before you get to the “Yeast Cake”. The yeast cake is where all the byproducts of fermentation settle out. When you are bottling or kegging you don’t typically want to have any in your beer. It isn’t bad or bad for you but it can make cloudy beer. The easy way to not get any into your beer is to stop just before you get there. Unfortunately that is hard to do when your beer is pitch black.

The simple solution to this is to tip the bucket before you start to drain. So with that done it was time to transfer.

It’s always easier to transfer with a homebrew (or two)

Tipping the bucket allowed me to stop just before the sediment got sucked out.

With all the beer in the keg into the fridge it went. This was a bit more challenging because, drumroll please, the fridge had finally been filled.

It was a little bit of a squeeze but all the kegs fit in there just perfectly, now it was time to wait while the beer carbonated. Till then, Prost!