I feel as thought I have turned a corner in my life. I now have draft beer accessible in my house. This could be both a blessing and a curse.
The blessing: kegging homebrew is SO much easier than bottling. This will save me hours of sanitizing bottles weeks of conditioning time. This is the second best homebrewing investment I’ve made, behind the wort chiller.
The curse: now that I have easy access to nips of beer without the commitment of an entire bottle, I may be perpetually buzzed. I need to invest in one of those pig livers…
My first beer on tap: Chocolate Cayenne Stout. Just as a teaser, the stout is very tasty. I’m going to post the recipe and do a full-fledged review of it later this week or next. I think I got the cayenne just right. It was a major cause of anxiety, as there is a fine line between pleasant tingle and “it hurts to pee.”
If you want to relive the experience of my first homebrew keg tapping, here it is in live video:
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Color me jealous! Is it really that much easier to keg?!
Yep. Once you have everything set up, for each batch you’re cleaning one big bottle instead of 50. And getting everything set up really isn’t that hard. I got my kegerator already assembled, but figuring out how to hook it all up wasn’t that complicated. And I’m not exactly Bob Villa…
Awesome – can’t wait to try it out. My favorite part of the video was when you dropped all your freshly steralized equipment on the floor to retrieve your screwdriver ;)
Welcome to the great new world of kegging! Over here the air smells a little sweeter, the sun shines a little brighter, strangers on the street are friendlier and bliss is never more than a tap-pull away.
But really, I’m even more interested to hear about this Chocolate Cayenne Stout.
Chocolate Cayenne Stout sounds like a risky venture…good to hear that it was a success! And as for the keg, well, that’s just impressive. (By the way, I just posted about my Colorado stouts and porters tasting dinner on The Hungry Masses.)
Your Chocolate Cayenne Stout is quite possibly….well I can’t explain how happy it made me. And the beauty of your keg was so simple and delightful. You are a lucky man indeedy.
I do consider myself fortunate. Thank you for the compliment!