S & S Brewing Co. has had some early success with our first 2 creations, our Dark Horse Porter and what will be our seasonal brew Christmas Cookie Ale. Ready to explore the next brew frontier and eager for a challenge we've decided to take advantage of the cold weather and test ourselves and rock out a lager. We have just brewed a fine (we think it will be we haven't actually tasted it) Black Lager. We're capitalizing it because that is the brews name....for now. It was suggested to me by someone on Facebook that we name it after something having to do with our newly renovated bathroom. I think there is some potential there, we just need to explore it a bit.
Lagers are tricky for homebrewers to make because they require a constant cold temperature during fermentation, right around 45-50 degrees. Usually most homebrewers will toss the carboy in an old fridge, but we don't have one of those laying around. What we do have is colder than a fridge and its abundant. Mother Nature has released Old Man Winter, her icicle ridden child upon us without his dinner. He helps keep our basement stay at a cool 48-50ish degrees in the winter and with the winter we're having now the mercury isn't going much higher until July. While the basement itself is probably sufficient we don't want to risk losing our precious creation. We created our own fridge by tossing the carboy into a bucket with a hole in the bottom and put that in a big plastic tray. Now and then I head outdoors, grab a bunch of the white stuff and drop some around the carboy to make sure it stays cool. After shoveling out the driveway today I took a gander to see how our fermenting child is doing, lo and behold it's resting at a lager perfect 48 degrees.
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