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I racked the porter over my rum-soaked vanilla beans tonight. When I opened up the fermenter, I noticed a faint vinegar scent. I was afraid of that after the adventure with my turkey baster over the weekend. It may be infected. The sample measured out at the same gravity as three days ago and it didn’t have a funky flavor, so I went ahead and racked it, hoping for the best. With any luck the scent will fade and the flavor will be fine after some conditioning. I’ll give it another taste test in about a week to make sure I’m not wasting carboy space.

The tasting didn’t go as well as I’d hoped, even though it wasn’t sour. The malts just don’t seem to be as deep and rich as I’d like. Same problem with the ESB. I’m pretty sure I know why. I guess it was a pretty bad move topping off with half a gallon of tap water. I took the OG reading after topping off and it was five points low compared to what the recipe called for. Had I just left 4.5 gallons alone, I’d probably have a better product to look forward to. Lesson learned. Take the OG reading, then top off if the reading is high and I’ve boiled too much off. I think the porter wort volume shortage was trub loss, not boil loss. Live and learn.

I’m fighting a cold at the moment, so beer tastings have been on hold. This is bad timing as I need bottles so I can bottle my pale ale next weekend. That’s the one beer I think I can count on to be outstanding, so I want it bottled and carbonating. Three weeks roughly from bottling to drinking and I don’t think it needs another week of carboy conditioning.

I hate bottling.  What a pain in the arse.  Actually, it will be quite a bit better going forward as I’m rinsing bottles as I empty them.  At first, though, I was just collecting them without any real cleaning.  Then at bottling time I’d have to soak them in TSP and take the bottle brush after them, etc.  Blows a whole afternoon/evening.  It should be better now since all I’ll have to do is disinfect and snap a cap on.  Still, it’s a pain.

Now, I’m not the most handy person in the world with tools in my hand.  I’m not bad at learning by trial and error, so I do things around the house when they need done.  I usually get a second chance if I screw something up.  That said, a DIY kegging setup looks pretty much one and done to me.  Cutting the hell out of a refrigerator is terminal in one way or the other.  It either lives on as a keggerator, or it dies a horrible death on the trash heap.  I’m about 50/50.  I don’t like those odds.  I need to buy.  I can’t justify the expense of household money to the non-beer swilling wife or to myself.  It’s sort of like my dying flying hobby.  Burning holes in the sky at $100/hour is just difficult to explain when we have a house to pay for and three little turds to grow.  Same with a thousand dollars worth of kegging equipment or whatever it would be (I’m wildly guessing).  But I have a big out.  Poker.

I managed to run up a pretty nice poker bankroll a couple years ago and bought some nice things after getting bored with the game and cashing out.  It was fun until I started taking it too seriously.  Then it became less fun.  Think college bowling team.  I haven’t hardly bowled since.  Same thing.

But, I now have proper motivation.  I NEED a kegging system.  And so I shall have one.  But, I have to purchase every stinking penny worth of equipment with non-family budget money.  It has to all come from poker, or something else I haven’t thought of yet. 

I also want to leave enough bankroll behind to play halfway decent stakes later if I want to after earning my setup.  So, I think I’ll take money out gradually and leave myself with a decent chunk of change to play with just in case I still like the game when I’m finished.

I’ll be playing mostly on-line, unfortunately.  Live is SO much easier these days.  In the old days the internet was easy pickings, but not so any more.  There are a lot of good players.  Live, not so much from what I’ve seen.  But it’s difficult for me to get down to the local card rooms very often.  It’s sort of a special occasion thing.

I’m starting out with somewhere around $850, which consists of about $500 in cash winnings from a day and a half of 8/16 limit hold’em at Bay 101, and somewhere in the neighborhood of $350 scattered around on-line.  I’ll be playing mostly tiny little NL games on-line.  Live, I’ll be supplementing with family entertainment budget money if I’m lucky enough to get down to the cardroom.  I hereby dub this my “Keg Quest”.  Wish me luck!

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