Snowflakes in Hell

On Friday I went to draw a glass of my Hulmville Honey Red to celebrate the end of the week.  There’s nothing more frustrating than tapping the keg, going to draw the glass, and getting that awful gurgling sound that indicates the keg is empty.  I made the honey red back in October, which is the last time I got to make any beer.

So it’s time to make beer again.   The question is, what to make?  My stouts seem to go over best with guests, which is good because it means the beer disappears faster, and thus I can make more of it.  I was thinking, though, of maybe making an IPA again, or perhaps trying an Imperial Stout.   I’m leaning toward the Imperial Stout.

I make my beer from a bag of grain.  I use a Rubbermaid ten gallon Gatoraide cooler as my mash/lauter tun.   The cost for producing a batch of beer typically runs about 20 dollars.  That gives you roughly two cases equivalent, but I seldom bottle anymore, and typically just go straight into a five gallon Cornelius Keg.

So I might have to show Bitter next weekend how we make beer.  We’re taking a tour of the Budweiser Brewery in St. Louis when we’re there for the NRA convention.  To have an appreciation for making beer on such a tremendous scale, it helps to have knowledge of how it works on a small scale.

You know you’re a gun nut when, for the first time in a few months, you use your oven, not a cook a roast or a turkey, but to heat up some parts from your AK-74 so they’ll dry out after you gave it a nice bath in warm soapy water to wash out all the corrosive primer residue that built up on it after a day’s shooting.

I’m about 1/3rd through my batch of the corrosive stuff.  I might take the other tin that was in the crate and reserve it, and bring it out sometime when I’m either short of 5.45×39 or nostalgic.  The good thing about corrosive primed ammo is that it lasts forever.  Non-corrosive primers have a shorter shelf life.