Kegs and Cherries

OK first off, I have been way behind on blogging.  Second, I have been way behind on brewing.  So, a little recap of my last beer is long overdue:

Cherry wheat.  It turned out all right, a little weak in flavor for what I wanted but still pretty solid.  It was more of a light Belgian(y) flavor than I anticipated, but the cherry flavor was subtle and sweet.  I was expecting a stronger flavor though because I used five pounds of raw Flathead cherries for shit sake.  I guess I didn’t get the total flavor from the cherries by only adding them to the carboy during secondary fermentation.  Next time I try a fruit beer I will know to mash the fruit and pull some more of the flavor out. 

The beer, however, was not the focus point of this batch - the new keg and kegerator was.  Yep, I got myself a keg, CO2 tank, and turned my mini-fridge into a damn nice kegerator.  I drilled a hole right through the top of the fridge and coiled the liquid tube around the top freezer part of the fridge.  I thought it was pretty clever, until the liquid tube froze solid after 10 minutes of not pouring any beer.  So, that was a total buzz kill that lead to me turning the fridge on and off constantly to keep it flowing.  I will have to find a better way to quickly drink my experimental brews without putting them in a bottle.  But in the meantime, I will be bottling my next beer, an oatmeal stout.  I just got all the ingredients and will be trying out a partial mash this time instead of 100% extract, which means basically it is a little more than just steeping some grains and using malt extract.  I will use the grains to extract all the sugars out to get the alcohol content I want and truer flavor.  It’s closer to real brewing and more entertaining.  I will be sure to post pictures of this brew process.  Anyway, I am glad to be back to brewing and will follow up with a long overdue blog on the weekend that was BEERFEST!!